WASHINGTON – Republicans on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, led by Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), today expanded their
ongoing probe into the federal government’s policing of school board meetings
to include the Department of Education.
The broadening inquiry follows
revelations of
emails between National School Board Association (NSBA) officials that suggest
a controversial association letter to President Biden was initiated by
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
The NSBA’s September 29, 2021, letter to Biden
called on the government to consider using the
PATRIOT Act and other anti-terrorism authorities against concerned
parents at school board meetings. Days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland
issued
a memo mobilizing federal law enforcement to track parents
who express opposition at school board meetings. Though the NSBA has since
disavowed
the letter, the Department’s guidance remains unchanged.
Recently
released emails suggest the NSBA’s letter was prompted by a request from
Secretary Cardona. In separate letters
to the respective agencies, the committee lawmakers are seeking details on any
coordination between and within the Education Department and Justice Department
regarding the NSBA letter and other efforts to crack down on dissent among
parents at school board meetings.
RELATED:
January 18, 2022
VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
The
Honorable Merrick B. Garland
Attorney
General
U.S.
Department of Justice
950
Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington,
D.C. 20530
Dear
Attorney General Garland:
We
recently learned that Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona may have requested
that the National School Boards Association (NSBA) send its September 29, 2021
letter to President Biden. This is the
letter that compared concerned parents to domestic terrorists. The letter was the proximate cause of your
October 4, 2021 memorandum directing the FBI and the various U.S. Attorneys to
focus on harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence directed at school
officials. We first wrote to you about
this issue on October 7, 2021 stating that you should make clear to the
American people that it is not the role of the federal government to silence
those who question local school boards, and then we followed up on that letter
on December 6, 2021 to ask why, inexplicably, the FBI’s Counterterrorism
Division had gotten involved in monitoring local school-board meetings.
The attached
email thread, which was recently released by the group Parents Defending
Education, appears to show two NSBA officials discussing whether NSBA’s
emergency procedures for bypassing board approval of official correspondence
were followed before sending its September 29 letter to President Biden. In denying that such procedures were
followed, one of the officials wrote,
At the
time, no, I didn’t think the letter fell under an emergency situation, it
wasn’t characterized that way when Chip told the officers he was writing a
letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary
Cardona.
[1]
We now
have reason to believe personnel at the NSBA coordinated its September 29
letter with, or acted at the behest of, the sitting Secretary of Education, as
well as White House personnel—in a letter that asks for the PATRIOT Act to be
used against American parents.
We are
concerned about the prospect of the Secretary of Education requesting that a
trade association write a letter to the President of the United States so that
you, the Attorney General, might have the requisite cover to deploy federal law
enforcement in such a questionable manner.
We have the following questions for you regarding this development:
1.
When did
you first learn about Secretary Cardona’s request that the NSBA write its
September 29 letter to President Biden?
What were the circumstances under which you first learned about
Secretary Cardona’s request that the NSBA write its September 29 letter to
President Biden?
2.
Before
issuing your October 4 memorandum, did you or anyone else have any
communication with Secretary Cardona or anyone else at the Department of
Education about the matters at issue in the NSBA’s September 29 letter? What was the nature and substance of such communication(s)?
3.
Before
issuing your October 4 memorandum, did you or anyone else at the Department of
Justice have any communication with Secretary Cardona or anyone else at the
Department of Education about the matters at issue in your October 4 memorandum? What was the nature and substance of such
communication(s)?
4.
After
issuing your October 4 memorandum, did you or anyone else at the Department of
Justice have any communication with Secretary Cardona or anyone at the
Department of Education about the matters at issue in your October 4
memorandum? What was the nature and
substance of such communication(s)?
5.
At a
January 11, 2022 hearing, National Security Division Assistant Attorney General
Matthew G. Olsen indicated that there have been no known cases of domestic
terrorism associated with local school-board meetings. If that is the case, why have you involved
the National Security Division in administering the October 4 memorandum?
6.
If there
are no known cases of domestic terrorism associated with local school-board
meetings, why is the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI administering a
threat tag entitled EDUOFFICIALS? Who at
the Department of Justice tasked the Counterterrorism Division to do so?
7.
How many
individuals are being tracked under the threat tag EDUOFFICIALS?
8.
Please
provide copies of all records and emails in your possession reflecting or
relating to Secretary Cardona’s request that the NSBA write its September 29
letter to President Biden.
Furthermore,
we are in receipt of the Department of Justice’s one-page response to our
letters to you of October 7, 2021 and December 6, 2021, which both concerned
the Department’s involvement in local school matters. We think that response, dated December 22,
2021 and signed by Acting Assistant Attorney General Peter S. Hyun, is
incomplete. It points to statements from
your October 4 memorandum discussing how spirited debate is protected by the
First Amendment and that it is the Department of Justice’s job to ensure the
safety of all Americans, but frankly those issues were not the focus of our two
letters to you on this matter. Rather,
we asked you to withdraw your October 4 memorandum because of the chilling
effect it has on the speech of American parents. By involving the National Security Division
and the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI in local matters, you have created
widespread fear that the national security apparatus of the United States is
keeping tabs on them.
Please
respond no later than Monday, February 7, 2022.
You may contact John Schoenecker on Ranking Member Grassley’s staff at
(202) 224-5225 with any questions you may have about this letter and its
requests.
Sincerely,
Charles
E. Grassley
Ranking
Member
Committee
on the Judiciary
Lindsey
O. Graham
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
John
Cornyn
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Michael
S. Lee
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Ted Cruz
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Ben
Sasse
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Josh
Hawley
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Tom
Cotton
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
John
Kennedy
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Thom
Tillis
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Marsha
Blackburn
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
***
January 18, 2022
VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
The
Honorable Miguel A. Cardona
Secretary
of Education
U.S.
Department of Education
400
Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington,
D.C. 20202
Dear
Secretary Cardona:
We
recently learned that you may have requested that the National School Boards
Association (NSBA) send to President Biden its September 29, 2021 letter, which
compared concerned parents speaking out at local school boards to domestic
terrorists. That letter was the
proximate cause of Attorney General Garland issuing a memorandum on October 4,
2021 directing the FBI and the various U.S. Attorneys to focus on harassment,
intimidation, and threats of violence directed at school officials. That action by Attorney General Garland has
created a dramatic chilling effect on parents throughout the country and is an
inappropriate deployment of federal law enforcement. Since that time, we have written twice to Attorney
General Garland about this matter, once on October 7, 2021 stating that he
should make clear to the American people that it is not the role of the federal
government to silence those who question local school boards, and then again on
December 6, 2021 to ask why, inexplicably, the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division
had gotten involved in monitoring local school-board meetings.
This
past Tuesday, the news broke that makes the case you played an instrumental
role in starting these events. The
attached email thread, which was recently released by the group Parents
Defending Education, appears to show two NSBA officials discussing whether
NSBA’s emergency procedures for bypassing board approval of official
correspondence were followed before sending its September 29 letter to
President Biden. In denying that such
procedures were followed, one of the officials wrote,
At the
time, no, I didn’t think the letter fell under an emergency situation, it
wasn’t characterized that way when Chip told the officers he was writing a
letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary
Cardona.
[2]
This
statement indicates that you asked NSBA personnel to send a letter to President
Biden, a letter that White House staff also helped put together and asks for
the PATRIOT Act to be used against American parents.
This is
extremely concerning to us. It appears
that you, the Secretary of Education, instructed a trade association to write a
letter to the President of the United States so that the Attorney General might
have the requisite cover to deploy federal law enforcement in a manner so as to
scare American parents out of speaking freely at school-board meetings and
petitioning their local governments. We
have the following questions for you regarding this development:
1.
Did you
or anybody at the Department of Education request that the NSBA write its
September 29 letter to President Biden, or otherwise communicate any of the
information contained in that letter?
What was the nature and substance of that request or communication? What did you, or anybody at the Department of
Education, specifically ask NSBA personnel to do in this regard? When was this request made?
2.
How did
the issues raised in the NSBA’s September 29 letter come to your
attention? What was the nature and
substance of that communication? Who was
that communication with? When did that
communication take place?
3.
Did any
individuals within the White House have any communications with you or anybody
at the Department of Education about the issues raised in the NSBA’s September
29 letter? If so, what was the nature
and substance of that communication? Who
was that communication with? When did
that communication take place?
4.
Did any
individuals within the Department of Justice have any communications with you
or anybody at the Department of Education about the issues raised in the NSBA’s
September 29 letter? If so, what was the
nature and substance of that communication?
Who was that communication with?
When did that communication take place?
5.
Did any
individuals within the Department of Justice have any communications with you
or anybody at the Department of Education about the issues raised by Attorney
General Garland’s memorandum of October 4, 2021 about this matter? If so, what was the nature and substance of
that communication? Who was that
communication with? When did that
communication take place?
6.
Did any
individuals at or associated with the American Federation of Teachers, the
National Education Association, or any other education organization, have any
communications with you or anybody at the Department of Education about the
issues raised in the NSBA’s September 29 letter? If so, what was the nature and substance of
that communication? Who was that communication
with? When did that communication take
place?
7.
Please
provide copies of all records relating to the aforementioned questions,
including but not limited to, all records and emails reflecting or relating to
the NSBA’s September 29 letter to President Biden.
8.
Do
parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of
their children?
Please
respond no later than Monday, February 7, 2022.
You may contact John Schoenecker on Ranking Member Grassley’s staff at
(202) 224-5225 with any questions you may have about this letter and its
requests.
Sincerely,
Charles
E. Grassley
Ranking
Member
Committee
on the Judiciary
Lindsey
O. Graham
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
John
Cornyn
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Michael
S. Lee
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Ted Cruz
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Ben
Sasse
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Josh
Hawley
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Tom
Cotton
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
John
Kennedy
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Thom
Tillis
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
Marsha
Blackburn
United
States Senator
Committee
on the Judiciary
-30-
[1]
Email from to K. Swett to M. Maraldo (Oct. 6, 2021, 8:02 AM), attached hereto
as Ex. 1.
[2]
Email from to K. Swett to M. Maraldo (Oct. 6, 2021, 8:02 AM), attached hereto
as Ex. 1.