If the Biden administration needs to be indicted for its unprecedented treatment of parents and conservatives and for its unheard-of weaponization of the Department of Justice, Missouri’s two senators provided the probable cause this week.

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s nomination for federal AG, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt – both former Missouri AGs and practiced prosecutors – issued stinging verbal indictments of the outgoing administration.

Their remarks constitute a detailed outline for historians – and a master class for any contemporaries who fail to fathom the voter outrage and desperation that led to President Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the Nov. 5 election.

Below is the entire video, along with the key excerpts, from Josh Hawley’s questioning of Bondi.

On DOJ weaponization

I, too, have taken note of the number of times you have been asked about weaponization of the Department of Justice, as if it was a theoretical possibility that might happen in the future. One of my colleagues on the other side said ‘weaponization may well occur under your tenure.’ 

We all know that weaponization has occurred like we’ve never seen before in American history under this administration. And I want to get even more specific. In the last four years, this administration has carried out an unprecedented attack and campaign against people of faith.  

If you look at the numbers, we’ve never seen anything like it before in American history. It has been one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of the Justice Department and in the history of the FBI. And I hope that you will reverse this and do right by every American citizen including, especially, people of faith. 

Let me give you some specifics. After the Dobbs case was decided by the Supreme Court over 100 pregnancy care centers and over 300 churches in this country were attacked, vandalized, firebombed. Do you happen to know off the top of your head how many prosecutions Merrick Garland’s Justice Department brought in those cases?  

It’s a stunning number. It’s two. 

Hundreds of churches, hundreds of pregnancy care centers – and I might just add, these pregnancy care centers, the attacks on them, which were violent, which were gruesome, were egged on and encouraged by rhetoric from members of Congress – including members of this body – who have said that pregnancy care centers aren’t real medicine, that they’re not real doctors. They have legitimized these attacks. And the same thing was true of churches. 

And this Justice Department couldn’t lift a finger to defend these Americans, But at the same time, they used legislation – a law known as the FACE act – to prosecute at least 53 different pro-life demonstrators, including people like Mark Houck from Pennsylvania, to whom this Justice Department sent a SWAT team to his door in the early morning hours. He has, I think seven children. In the early morning hours an FBI SWAT teams shows up at his door to take him into custody and prosecute him.  

By the way, he was acquitted. 

This kind of outrageous, disparate treatment has to end. 

We need a new chapter at the Justice Department, and we need it quickly.  

And I’m glad you’re committed to it. 

On ‘investigating the investigators’ 

Now, I also have heard you been asked about your comment that you thought that in some cases we need to investigate the investigators, the ones who were bad. You know, I have to say, I’m glad to hear you stand by that.  

We need to do that. You need to do that. And I’ll give you another example. 

I’m sure you’ve read about this memo, which I now hold in my hands, this memo that was developed by the FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, 23rd January, 2023, targeting Catholic parishes for spying, for recruitment of infiltrators.  

I mean, the memo goes on and on and on about the FBI’s plans to put assets into Catholic parishes, into choirs. This is an unbelievable, unbelievable assault on Americans’ First Amendment rights. And we only know of it because of a brave whistleblower who came forward and released it to us.  

And I will tell you, I have never been misled and lied to like I was by the current attorney general and the now-former FBI director, when they sat right where you’re sitting now and told this committee, ‘Ohh, we don’t know anything about it. Ohh, only one field office was involved, it was the single work of a single field office and a very few individuals.’ 

As it turns out, that’s not true. Multiple field offices were involved. Multiple individuals were involved. 

Let me just say this: To our knowledge, no one who was involved in the writing and performance, execution, of this memo has been disciplined or fired.

And to be clear, this is an outrageous abuse. It is an outrageous abuse. One of the worst abuses of Department of Justice and FBI authority in our history.

On targeting of parents, Catholics

This memo, this memo targeting Catholic parishes, repeatedly refers to, as, an expert source, a group called the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now, the Southern Poverty Law Center has a long history as an anti-religious group that has repeatedly gone after conservative and religious organizations, called them hate groups, called them sometimes terrorist groups. They’re cited in this memo. 

They once infamously, the SPLC, called the Family Research Council a terrorist hate group and an armed gunman came into their lobby and opened fire. 

Will you put a stop to the use of the SPLC as an official source for any Department of Justice memorandum or finding? (Bondi agrees to.)

We now know the Biden administration, the White House, the Secretary of Education, solicited a letter from the National School Boards Association – they ginned it up; it was fake from beginning to end, they ginned it up – calling for law enforcement scrutiny against parents, taxpaying parents, who were going to school board meetings, inquiring what their children were being taught, inquiring about face masks, critical race theory. 

And Attorney General Garland, you talk about bowing to political pressure: When the White House demanded he activate the FBI against these parents, amazingly, unbelievably, he did it. 

And he issued this memorandum in October of 2021. 

All of this time later, that memorandum has still never been formally rescinded – even after the National School Boards Association withdrew their letter, admitted they had been wrong to call parents potential domestic terrorists who were merely raising questions about what their children were being taught. Garland never apologized for it. He never did anything about it. It is still in effect. 

This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I’ve met the parents who went to these meetings. They’re Republicans or Democrats. They have no partisanship. But they want to know that their First Amendment rights will be protected. And you rescinding that memo formally, after frankly the current attorney general lied to us about it for years, would send a tremendous message.