President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report early Tuesday morning revealing how the Biden administration systematically targeted pro-life activists for FACE Act prosecutions, often at the behest of pro-abortion organizations.
The nearly 900-page report constitutes a review of approximately 700,000 internal DOJ records showing the Biden administration weaponizing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act against pro-life Americans by engaging in biased enforcement, demanding harsher sentencing, authorizing aggressive arrest tactics, collaborating with pro-abortion groups for surveillance, and making inappropriate comments about religion.
“This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said 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 FACE Act is a 1994 law that “prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services or to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” The act was written to equally protect abortion clinics, pro-life pregnancy resource centers, and churches; however, data indicate that 97 percent of FACE Act cases since the law’s inception have been against pro-life advocates.
The DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group” report confirms that the Biden administration was laser-focused on jailing pro-life activists and “largely ignored attacks on pro-life pregnancy resource centers, only charging five people for vandalism and attacks…” despite the flood of violence against churches and pregnancy centers following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade.
“During the four years under President Biden, DOJ charged more than 45 pro-life defendants in over 20 cases with violating the FACE Act in connection with pro-life demonstrations. This was a significant increase in FACE Act prosecutions compared to prior administrations,” the report notes, adding that Biden’s DOJ targeted some Christian pro-life activists more than once.
Collaboration with Abortion Groups
The DOJ report confirms that the department, under former Attorney General Merrick Garland, revived the “National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers” and collaborated with abortion groups like the National Abortion Federation (NAF), Planned Parenthood, and Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) to track the First Amendment activity of pro-life activists.
The report alleges that the abortion groups “capitalized on their relationship with the Task Force to gain internal information and push targets for FACE Act enforcement.”
“NAF, Planned Parenthood, and FMF not only flagged concerns about possible violations of the FACE Act, but also monitored the activities and locations of pro-life activists and shared updates about their First Amendment activities with the Biden DOJ and FBI in case chargeable conduct occurred. The Biden DOJ later charged many of the individuals surveilled by abortion NGOs,” the report states.
The report zeroes in on the dubious actions of the Task Force director, Civil Rights Division (CRT) Trial Attorney Sanjay Patel, who is notably the architect behind the Biden DOJ’s pairing of a KKK-era charge called “conspiracy against rights” with the FACE Act to bolster potential sentencing time for pro-life activists.
READ MORE: Explainer: DOJ Uses KKK-Era Charge to Extend Prison Time for Pro-Life Activists
“Coordination primarily took place between Patel, as Task Force Director, and NAF Security Director, Michelle Davidson, remained in routine communication,” the report reads. “Patel described Davidson as an ‘MVP’ at bringing incidents to his ‘attention, often in real-time, which usually result in an investigation/ prosecution.”‘
The report includes several examples of pro-abortion groups compiling information on pro-lifers for the Task Force. In one example, the NAF “compiled a law enforcement resource guide” before a national event by Operation Save America. The guide “broke down the schedule of events — including protests and meetings at local churches — before providing detailed dossiers of ‘anti-choice individuals’ expected to attend, including pro-life pastors and speakers.”
“These dossiers included significant amounts of personal identifying information, such as birthdates, addresses, contact information, physical descriptions and photographs, names of family and close associates (including photographs of minor children), affiliated groups, history of pro-life and faith-based activities, and drivers’ license numbers. The guide included information about prior protests that ultimately were the basis for the Biden DOJ’s FACE Act charges,” the report reads.
The report also discusses how Patel “provided significant amounts of information to NAF, seemingly unbeknownst to CRT supervisors who thought that the ‘information flow ha[d] always been a one-way street.'” The report accuses Patel of giving NAF a list of all active FACE Act charges, as well as information about the terms of release for several pro-life activists.
The NAF also invited Patel to attend and speak at its national conference about the FACE Act, which he accepted. The report further alleges that in 2020, Patel had agreed to serve as a reference for NAF’s application for a third-party grant, which the DOJ says raises major ethical questions.
CBS News reported Monday evening, before the release of the DOJ report, that the department fired at least four prosecutors who were involved in Biden-era FACE Act prosecutions, including Patel.
“Inappropriate Prosecutorial Conduct”
Trump’s DOJ found that Biden DOJ prosecutors “engaged in inappropriate conduct and comments direct toward pro-life defendants.”
“Prosecutors disparaged defendants’ religious beliefs, Catholic judges, and defense counsel,” the report reads. “Prosecutors sought to exclude religious jurors. They declined to allow some defendants to self-surrender, instead authorizing aggressive arrest tactics. And, when defense counsel requested data on historic FACE Act prosecutions, Patel asserted that he did not maintain those records, referring counsel to the FOIA process, although he had the data on hand and had provided similar information to abortion NGOs a year prior.”
The report points to an example of a FACE Act case out of Michigan called United States v. Zastrow. At one point in that case, Frances Carlson, an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, complained that they “ended up with a very Catholic magistrate on duty.”
Other records show the Biden DOJ trial team brainstorming how to keep Christians off the jury.
“The judge adopted questions into the jury questionnaire that the Biden DOJ proposed. While the final phrasing was unremarkable, internal drafts indicate what types of information the trial team hoped to glean from the answers, such as how frequently the jurors attend services or whether their children attend religious schools,” the report reads. “Throughout the process, they searched for ‘an indirect way to get some more info about religion without directly asking it.'”
“The trial notes are consistent with this approach. The Biden DOJ prosecutors flagged several Christian jurors for peremptory and for-cause strikes from the jury pool because of their faith,” the report continues.
Later, the trial team requested that the court limit the defendants’ ability to wear “Jesus buttons” to the trial. The report also reveals how a second AUSA, Sunita Doddamani, compared pro-life Christians to cult members and described them as “culty” while drafting her rebuttal in the case.
The report also honed in on the 2022 case of Mark Houck, a Christian father of seven who was arrested at gunpoint in front of his wife and children. The case drew national attention, with conservatives and Republicans accusing the Biden DOJ of trying to intimidate and silence abortion opponents. The DOJ accused Houck of violating the FACE Act in a shoving incident that local law enforcement had declined to pursue, and he was ultimately found not guilty. Last week, Houck won a seven-figure settlement against the DOJ.
In that case, Patel spent months persuading his supervisors to let him bring FACE Act charges against Houck after Planned Parenthood tipped the FBI off to the incident and requested federal action, the report states.
The report details how, despite Houck’s willingness to self-surrender, the FBI ended up arriving at his home with 16 armed agents and seven vehicles in an early morning raid in front of his wife and children.
After public outcry, Patel internally blamed the FBI and said he urged them to allow Houck to self-surrender — a claim that is unsupported by a review of internal communications, the report alleges.
“In a later assessment of lessons learned for upcoming Tennessee FACE indictments, Patel gave his view that the FBI’s ‘main reason’ for arrest rather than allowing self-surrender was to seize phones for search warrants, but that ‘I think the unspoken reason is bc the FBI really likes to make arrests.'”
One AUSA also complained about how Houck’s family spoke out about the aggressive arrest.
“The tragedy is that Mrs. Houck is attempting to taint the public’s view of the arrest and prosecution,” one AUSA reportedly said.
Sentencing Disparities and Biased Enforcement
The DOJ also found that the Biden DOJ pursued significantly harsher sentences for pro-life defendants than for violent pro-abortion defendants.
Under Biden, the DOJ requests an average sentence of 26.8 months for pro-defendants, compared to 12.3 months for pro-abortion defendants.
The report states how the Biden DOJ appears to have only begun following up on attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers after “significant public outcry and congressional response” to the Houck case. After that, Patel oversaw three cases out of Florida, Texas, and Ohio related to attacks on pregnancy centers.
The DOJ also found that despite the FACE Act’s application to houses of worship, the Biden administration did not pursue any cases related to attacks on churches.
“During the Biden Administration, there were numerous violent attacks against religious institutions in connection with those organization’s pro-life views. Indeed, in light of that violence, members of the U.S. Senate specifically requested that Attorney General Garland use the FACE Act to protect houses of worship,” the report reads. “Despite the increased hostility faced by houses of worship, the Biden DOJ did not pursue a single FACE Act case involving houses of worship during this time.”
The report concludes by laying out all the ways the DOJ under President Trump has worked to correct the Biden DOJ’s actions.
The report points to Trump pardoning more than 20 pro-life activists prosecuted, and some imprisoned, by the Biden DOJ and notes that the DOJ has settled civil cases and taken “personnel action” against those responsible. The DOJ also said it dismissed three civil lawsuits against pro-life activists and issued a directive that prosecutors may only bring abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions under extraordinary circumstances.
“The behavior unearthed in this report is shameful,” said Assistant Attorney General Daniel Burrows, Office of Legal Policy. “Lawyers who should have known better withheld evidence, worked to keep committed religious people off juries, and generally allowed the Department of Justice to be used as the enforcement arm of pro-abortion special interests.”
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.