WASHINGTON — More than a year after President Donald Trump pardoned 23 pro-life activists convicted of violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE Act, and the Justice Department announced it would severely limit prosecutions of such cases, the department has issued an 882-page report accusing the Biden administration of weaponizing the prosecutions.
Some of the items detailed in the report took place in 2020 and January 2021, the final months of Trump’s first term.
Additionally, the report, issued April 14, includes emails from Biden Justice Department prosecutor Sanjay Patel, in which he offered to serve as a reference to help the National Abortion Federation, or NAF, with an application for a private grant apparently to be used to protect abortion clinics.
“This department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a statement. “No department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.”
The report claims that the National Abortion Federation and other “pro-abortion” groups collaborated with the previous Biden administration to monitor and target pro-life activists, including during the annual March for Life rally and march in Washington.
A statement from the Thomas More Society, the Chicago-based public interest law firm that had sought the pardons, said the report “vindicates what (the society) argued in courtrooms and in the media for years: that federal prosecutors selectively pursued pro-life advocates while giving the abortion lobby an open line to drive enforcement decisions.”
Among critics of the report was Kristen Clarke, former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “We enforced the law even-handedly and put public safety at the center of this work” to address “the real violence, threats of violence, and obstruction that too many people face in our country when it comes to reproductive health care.”
Receiving Trump pardons were Joan Bell, Coleman Boyd, Joel Curry, Jonathan Darnel, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, Herb Geraghty, William Goodman, Dennis Green, Lauren Handy, Paulette Harlow, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, Father Fidelis Moscinski (a member of the Franciscan Fathers of the Renewal), Justin Phillips, Paul Place, Jay Smith, Paul Vaughn, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow and James Zastrow.
Handy, convicted for her participation in a 2020 abortion clinic blockade in Washington, was the best-known of these because of a later press conference she held announcing that she had kept five aborted fetuses, all recovered from the clinic, in a refrigerator. She was serving the longest sentence of any of them at 57 months, and at the time of the pardon was in a federal prison in Florida.
The Justice Department, using a designated task force, began to frequently apply the law in 2022 after the Supreme Court, in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which held that abortion was a constitutional right.
Overall, the DOJ brought at least 26 charges against pro-life individuals under the FACE Act in 2022, according to Alliance Defending Freedom.
After Trump’s pardons, the Justice Department announced that the law would only be applied in “extraordinary circumstances, or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors, such as death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage.” It also dropped three civil lawsuits against pro-life activists.
The new report says the Biden Justice Department “often ignored and downplayed vandalism and attacks against pregnancy resource centers or houses of worship.”
According to the report, the department under Attorney General Merrick Garland “pursued three FACE Act prosecutions involving pro-life victims and informed these pro-life groups. Because (Assistant Attorney General) Kristen Clarke and Civil Rights Division attorneys were unfamiliar with these groups, they struggled to identify how to describe the victims: Clarke was unsure “whether the anti-abortion folks called themselves Pregnancy Centers or Pregnancy Resource Centers.”
The department “closely coordinated with abortion providers” and nongovernment organizations, particularly the National Abortion Federation, “to identify potential pro-life targets for investigation and build cases against them,” it states.
Patel, the report charges, coordinated with Michelle Davidson, security director of the Federation. “Patel described Davidson as an ‘MVP’ at bringing incidents to his ‘attention, often in real-time, which usually result in an investigation/prosecution.” He viewed NAF as a ‘great resource for any investigation we have that involves clinic violence,’ and a ‘wonderful contact for (him) as it relates to FACE Act investigations.”
In addition, “Davidson forwarded news articles about Handy from Right Wing Watch and her social media posts. In response, Patel asked for names and case numbers of her associates who had local cases pending in D.C. Davidson then compiled information for Patel about Handy, Fr. (Fidelis) Moscinski, and William Goodman, along with others.”
However, some of the emails between Patel and NAF were exchanged in 2020, when Trump was still in office.
One of the pardoned pro-lifers, Goodman, in a statement provided to OSV News, responded, “The fight for justice is both practical and spiritual. Rescuers involved in the federal FACE (Act) and conspiracy cases now have a new opportunity to speak for the voiceless.”
As for Handy, the report says Davidson “forwarded the FBI social media posts from Handy about pro-life protests and noted that NAF was planning to alert other facilities in the area.”
Also, the NAF “obtained an audio recording of Handy speaking to pro-life activists and corresponding documents from the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. NAF forwarded them to Patel and other DOJ attorneys.”
Red Rose Rescue, the pro-life activist group under the umbrella of the Michigan-based Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, also received a mention.
Planned Parenthood “compiled a Security Advisory on Red Rose Rescues (sic), which it characterized as ‘trespass/blockade’ tactics used by the anti-abortion movement designed to avoid federal FACE Act violations.’ The advisory flagged its assessment that this pro-life group was likely to recruit like-minded ‘opposition’ and assessed that ”should this movement grow, it will have a direct impact on Planned Parenthood operations.”
“How interesting,” said Monica Miller, director of Citizens for a Pro-Lofe Society, in an April 14 statement to OSV News. “We celebrate that this weaponized Biden administration DOJ is finally over.”
The national March for Life came under Justice Department scrutiny after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
On Jan. 8, Davidson, the report states, “explained that with the upcoming March for Life, NAF was ‘very concerned that the individuals that participated in the invasion at the Capitol will continue similar actions at this event,’ and they wanted to provide as much information as possible in light of ‘growing concerns that these types of extremists now pose an even greater threat to Homeland Security than (Foreign Terrorist Organizations).'”
Several days later, NAF followed up with a dossier listing “the names of our well known antis” as (p)eople of interest,” including Beatty Williams, a pro-life activist in New York City.
There was no March for Life rally on the National Mall that January; it had been planned for Jan. 29. Two weeks prior, on Jan. 15, the National Park Service actually closed the Mall until after the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden amid “real and substantial” threats of violence.
March for Life officials announced Jan. 15 they would hold online events on Jan. 29, citing both ongoing security concerns in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the pandemic.
“In light of the fact that we are in the midst of a pandemic which may be peaking, and in view of the heightened pressures that law enforcement officers and others are currently facing in and around the Capitol, this year’s March for Life will look different,” the March for Life said in a statement at the time.
About 200 people, flanked by members of the Knights of Columbus, sang hymns and walked a zigzag route with Jeanne Mancini, then president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, from the Museum of the Bible to the Supreme Court. There were no disruptions.
Included in the report is a 2023 email from Robert Ledogar, a security official with NAF, in which he mentioned “attending conferences and (rallies) such as the March for Life, so that we can identify and witness the extremists that find the need to prevent reproductive health care.”
