Top Justice Department lawyers pushed back against the Biden administration’s effort to investigate parents protesting at school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists, according to emails released Monday, as reported by The New York Post.

The internal messages described the proposed federal criminal probes as “ridiculous,” “political,” and “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

The controversy unfolded in the fall of 2021 as parents protested mask mandates and critical race theory at school board meetings.

Emails published by the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group show attorneys in Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco’s office objected to demands for federal intervention.

“This is ridiculous,” Robyn Thiemann, an attorney in Monaco’s office, wrote on Sept. 25, 2021. Her blunt assessment captured the resistance developing among Justice Department lawyers as the proposal circulated.

Corey Amundson, chief of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Divison, was equally direct. He called the effort, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Kevin Driscoll, deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Criminal Division, also warned about the appearance and effectiveness of the push. “It’s like they’ve [sic] affirmatively trying to make this thing not work and look political,” he wrote on Oct. 2, 2021.

No parents are known to have been charged with domestic terrorism for participating in demonstrations against school board officials. At least 25 investigations were opened, however, showing that the administration’s effort went beyond mere Washington chatter.

The push followed a Sept. 29, 2021, letter from National School Boards Association boss Chip Slaven.

He declared that United States public schools were “under an immediate threat” and cited protests involving COVID mandates and “propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula.”

Slaven asked the administration to use PATRIOT Act authorities to investigate “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials.” He argued that some incidents “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

The Biden administration had discussed school board incidents with the NSBA and other groups since July 2021. Justice Department attorneys began resisting the approach after the Sept. 29 letter started circulating.

Kevin Chambers, who was then associate deputy attorney general, initially described the demand for federal criminal investigations as unnecessary because the conduct was “state/local in character.”

Most Justice Department attorneys also did not view the cited conduct as criminal.

Some alleged threats against public school officials included posting public Facebook photographs showing school board members’ children not wearing masks. That example apparently failed to impress federal lawyers being asked to consider criminal investigations.

On Oct. 22, 2021, just 18 days after the letter, the NSBA issued an apology repudiating Slaven and organization President Viola Garcia, who had also signed it.

The retreat came after the organization had asked the federal government to consider whether certain school board confrontations amounted to domestic terrorism.

“[W]e deeply value not only the work of local school boards that make important contributions within our communities,” the organization’s board of directors said, “but also the voices of parents, who should and must continue to be heard when it comes to decisions about their children’s education, health, and safety.”

The DOJ’s weaponization task force suggested the NSBA letter could have treated an incident involving Loudoun County Public Schools parent Scott Smith as a threat potentially rising to domestic terrorism.

Smith’s daughter had been sexually assaulted by a transgender student.

Media coverage of Smith and Loudoun County’s handling of the bathroom sexual assault was credited with helping Republican Glenn Youngkin win the 2021 Virginia governor’s race.

Smith was not federally prosecuted, but Youngkin later pardoned him for local disorderly conduct charges.

Those charges followed Smith’s outburst at an August 2021 Loudoun County School Board meeting over school officials’ failure to protect his daughter.

After receiving the pardon in September 2023, Smith told Fox News his anger was directed not at the board, but at a “radical” parent who called him a liar and threatened to “ruin” him on social media.

“She looked at me dead in the face and said, ‘That’s not true, that’s not what happened. You are lying.’ … I called her an expletive — the next thing I know, there are hands all over me, grabbing me from behind,” Smith told anchor John Roberts.

Garland never withdrew his memo. In later congressional testimony, he maintained that none of his subordinates had expressed disagreement with the directive in his presence, even as the newly released emails reveal sharp objections among Justice Department attorneys.

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