Jim Jordan Puts Merrick Garland in a Half Nelson
BUCK: On Capitol Hill right now where you have Attorney General Merrick Garland, you know, the guy whose office put out that “nice free speech you have, parents concerned about their kids in school. Be a shame if something happened to it.” You know, really — really unsettling action from the chief law enforcement officer of the United States federal government. Representative Jim Jordan put this in a half nelson today. Here he is talking about the politicization of the DOJ on Capitol Hill.
JORDAN: The chairman just said the Trump DOJ was political and went after their opponents. Are you kidding me? Three weeks ago the national school board association writes President Biden asking him to involve the FBI in local school board matters. Five days later, the attorney general of the United States does just that. Does exactly what a political organization asked to be done, five days.
We’ve said — Republicans on this committee have sent the attorney general 13 letters in the last six months takes weeks and months to get a response eight of the letters we got nothing they just gave us the finger said we’re not gonna get back to you and all of our letters were actually send to the attorney general. Here’s a letter sent to someone else asking for a specific thing to be done and in five days the attorney general does it.
Here’s what the October 4th memo said. Quote I’m directing the FBI to convene meetings with local leaders. These meetings will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting. Dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting. A snitch line on parents started five days after a left wing political organization asks for it. If that’s not political, I don’t know what is.
CLAY: Well said by Jim Jordan who, by the way, is going to be on with us, I believe, next week. And it’s so well said, Buck, because when you actually deconstruct what’s going on here, it is set, first of all, this is what I said when the story came out. If somebody commits a crime locally, it should be prosecuted, right? That’s the job of local prosecutors. That’s the job of local police officers —
BUCK: We’re not savage communists. We don’t cheer on the burning down of police stations on the attacking of public officials or whatever. We don’t do that stuff.
Attorney General Garland’s only “evidence” that parents are “threatening” school board members?
The radically liberal National School Board Association told him so.
Seriously?!
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 21, 2021
CLAY: But the idea that you would involve the federal government in investigations into what parents do or say at school boards and that would label them as domestic terrorists strikes at the very fabric of American democracy, which is the essence of individuals being able to share their opinions on political matters and on important issues such as decisions that are being made to educate their children in local public schools. Like, this is the very heart of democracy.
BUCK: And the fact that they would go out there with this memo from the attorney general’s office — this wasn’t — you know, they got away with the IRS targeting for a while back in 2011, 2012 because said, oh, it was some low-level people in, like, the Cincinnati or the Cleveland office of the IRS. This is the absolute top of the DOJ food chain, so to speak, putting out a letter that’s clearly meant to say the Eye of Sauron is focused in on these parents which is going to have real implications, and that was why they did it, and it’s because they feel so comfortable weaponizing the bureaucracies for their own ends.
CLAY: No doubt and credit to Jim Jordan for calling it out and this is — and, by the way, we mentioned this earlier in the first hour, but the attorney general, Merrick Garland, despite the fact saying that he was going to investigate local school boards, he said he didn’t know anything about the Loudoun County issues and the potential sexual assault that were going on there and everything that spiraled out of that story. Disgraceful.
