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The Department of Justice under President Joe Biden failed to comply with federal protections when suspending whistleblowers’ security clearances, according to a memo released Tuesday by the Office of the Inspector General.
The inspector general found that the Justice Department doesn’t give employees a way to appeal suspended security clearances, which does not align with a federal regulation updated in 2022, according to its memo. Additionally, the inspector general found that the DOJ under Biden failed to provide employees a reasonable opportunity to stay on the federal payroll if they think the department suspended their clearance to retaliate against them for protected whistleblower activity.
“Existing DOJ practice is inconsistent with the intent of the federal statute,” the inspector general’s office announced in a news release.
House Republicans accused the FBI in a May 18, 2023, report of retaliating against FBI special agent Stephen Friend, FBI special agent Garret O’Boyle, and FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen for speaking out against the agency. O’Boyle said being placed on unpaid suspension by the FBI left his family effectively homeless.
The Office of Inspector General said it unearthed these concerns after receiving complaints from “employees alleging that their security clearances were suspended in retaliation for protected whistleblowing activity.”
Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt, who represents Allen through his organization, stated on social media that the memo was prompted in part by Allen’s complaint.
? This morning @JusticeOIG released a memo citing concerns about DOJ's compliance with whistleblower protections for employees with a security clearance. The review was in part prompted by the whistleblower complaint of @EMPOWR_us's client, Marcus Allen. https://t.co/Xg0u8bSCGM
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) May 14, 2024
Though the DOJ provides employees with an appeals channel if their security clearance is revoked, no such path exists for employees whose clearance is suspended pending a final decision on whether or not to revoke it, according to the Office of Inspector General. The inspector general identifies this as a problem because the law requires the DOJ to provide a path for whistleblowers to challenge suspensions lasting longer than a year as retaliatory.
Since the DOJ lacks a way for employees who suspect retaliation to contest suspensions if they go on for longer than a year, the agency “does not meet the requirements” required by law, according to the inspector general’s memo.
Losing security clearance often means DOJ employees can no longer do their jobs, seeing as jobs in the department can require that employees have clearance in order to perform their duties, according to the memo. This means, in addition to having their clearance suspended, these employees are often suspended from their jobs without pay.
Federal law mandates that individuals who believe the DOJ suspended their security clearance in retaliation for whistleblowing must be permitted, as far as it is practical, “to retain their government employment status” during the course of the suspension, according to the inspector general.
The Office of Inspector General also found that the DOJ’s existing policies create “the risk that the security process could be misused, as part of an inappropriate effort to encourage an employee to resign.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post Inspector General: Biden DOJ Broke Law on FBI Whistleblower Protection appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Justice Department’s Kristen Clarke allegedly reached out to her ex-husband Reginald Avery in May 2021, he told The Daily Signal, asking him for a statement saying that she was not a domestic abuser during a confirmation process where she did not disclose her past arrest.
The revelation is significant given that Clarke, at that time, had been nominated for a high-ranking position in the Department of Justice but chose not to disclose her 2006 arrest during a domestic violence incident. She now serves as the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
The Daily Signal first revealed the existence of that arrest, and its subsequent expungement, in an April 30 report that has prompted calls for her resignation from figures including Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
“Kristen Clarke is in charge of enforcing civil rights laws,” said Lee on April 30. “She enforces those laws aggressively against anyone who sneezes near an abortion clinic. And not at all against those who vandalize churches. She lied under oath during her confirmation proceedings, and should resign.”
New allegations indicate that Clarke sought her ex-husband’s help handling the potential publicization of her arrest just days before she was officially confirmed.
In May 2021, as some evidence emerged that Clarke might have an arrest in her background, Avery says that Clarke called him with her publicist on the line. According to Avery, Clarke asked him to provide her with a statement that clarified she was not a domestic abuser.
At this point, Clarke’s April 14, 2021, confirmation hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee had already taken place. She had already submitted her “responses for the record” to senators.
That includes her answer to Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s question: “Since becoming a legal adult, have you ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person?”
“No,” Clarke responded.
Avery says that at Clarke’s request, he sent an email on May 19, 2021, to his ex-wife’s publicist, Clothilde Ewing. The email, which he shared with The Daily Signal, read: “Kristen Clarke was not an abuser in our relationship.”
Clarke did not end up publicly using the statement from Avery, which related to a 2006 incident wherein Avery says she was arrested after she allegedly stabbed him with a knife. Earlier this month, following the publication of The Daily Signal’s report, Clarke accused Avery of being a domestic abuser but confirmed that she had not disclosed the arrest.
Avery told The Daily Signal that Clarke and Ewing (who did not respond to requests for comment) wanted him to say that Clarke was not “the” abuser in their relationship. He chose to say “an” rather than “the” to avoid giving the impression that he himself was an abuser, he shared.
Since Clarke and Avery share a son (who is now 19), Avery said he was eager to put the matter to to rest. He said his understanding at the time was that Clarke was facing underhanded attacks from conservatives and that his statement would “bring closure to the whole thing.” He does not have a record of the 2021 phone call.
“I thought it was harmless,” he explained of the email. “Looking back, it was a huge mistake, but I didn’t foresee any of this coming. So it was probably stupid on my part. But the bottom line is, they did approach me.”
The same day that Avery sent this email to Ewing, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF)’s Tom Jones published a report on AAF’s findings that the FBI failed to properly vet Clarke when it did not interview Avery.
AAF had distributed that report to its lists around 11:30 a.m. on May 19, 2021. Avery could not recall the exact day on which Clarke called him, but his email to Ewing was sent at 11:50 a.m. on May 19, 2021.
Jones previously told The Daily Signal that he began digging into Clarke’s background during her confirmation process and spoke to Avery around the same time. In early May 2021 text messages, Avery told Jones that Clarke attacked him with a knife, slicing his finger to the bone, during a domestic dispute in July 2006.
“The accusations against Kristen Clarke of lying to Congress and domestic violence are deeply troubling,” Jones told The Daily Signal last week. “Clearly she does not possess the character or integrity to be in any position of power. She must resign now.”
Clarke was confirmed to the DOJ, to lead the Civil Rights Division, on May 25, 2021.
Congratulations to Kristen Clarke on making history — there’s no one better to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. I know she’ll work tirelessly to advance civil rights and push our nation closer to our founding ideals of liberty, justice, and equality for all. https://t.co/57OTZDrb8c
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 26, 2021
The revelation comes after The Daily Signal published a report April 30 highlighting evidence that Clarke had not disclosed a 2006 arrest and subsequent expungement during her 2021 confirmation to the DOJ—and then explicitly denied ever having been arrested to Cotton in an interview April 21, 2021.
Clarke has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal, though the DOJ acknowledged receipt of these requests. She did speak to CNN earlier this month, however, confirming that she did not disclose the arrest and expungement and alleging that Avery domestically abused her.
He denied that he had abused his ex-wife in a statement to The Daily Signal, though he did say that Clarke got a restraining order against him shortly before he moved out of their shared home as they were getting divorced (court records show that Avery and Clarke finalized their contentious divorce in 2009).
Clarke got the order “after an argument,” Avery told The Daily Signal. “It was temporary but I just moved out anyway. She lied in court then too. Bunch of nonsense … but I just got my own place. I was so over it.”
That restraining order was the subject of an inquiry from The Washington Post to AAF’s Jones: On May 19, 2021, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin reached out to Jones asking about his “allegation regarding Kristen Clarke’s role in domestic abuse.”
Rubin’s press inquiry to Jones included a query about Avery (who says that Rubin never actually reached out to him).
“Do you have any comment on court documents showing she successfully obtained a restraining order against Reginald Avery?” Rubin asked Jones, who replied with a statement “unequivocally” condemning domestic violence and calling for a proper investigation into Clarke’s background.
Rubin did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal as to why she ultimately did not write her story.
Ewing, who Avery said is Clarke’s publicist, is a children’s author who previously worked for “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” for former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and for former President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. Ewing also has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.
The Daily Signal’s reporting on Clarke prompted calls for her to resign from Lee, the New York Post Editorial Board, and more. In early May, a group of conservative leaders called on Clarke to resign from her leadership position in a letter sent to the high-ranking DOJ official.
“The American people have lost trust in your ability to lead the Civil Rights Division,” reads a letter to Clarke, signed by Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller, American Accountability Foundation’ Jones, Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins, and CatholicVote President Brian Burch. “We request that you resign immediately.”
That letter repeatedly references The Daily Signal’s reporting and attaches a copy of the original report itself. It also points to Clarke’s enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act against pro-life activists.
“The American people deserve a Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice led with honesty and integrity,” the letter says. “Since taking over the Civil Rights Division, you have weaponized the Department of Justice by wielding the FACE Act against pro-life Americans in an unprecedented manner—even while standing idly by as churches and pro-life pregnancy centers are vandalized, and Jewish students are unable to attend class on college campuses.”
The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
When Jones reached out to Avery as part of his 2021 investigation into Clarke’s background and police records, the two men discussed the July 4, 2006, incident over text messages.
“I was seeing another woman,” Avery shared in the May 2021 text message exchange. “She was angry. Attacked me with a knife. I instinctively grabbed it. As I said earlier, I’m not blameless.”
“That’s the story,” Avery insisted. “That’s what happened. She went to jail.”
Prince George’s County Police Department records show that the department was called on nine different occasions by someone at Avery’s and Clarke’s Upper Marlboro, Maryland, household between May 2003 and December 2007.
Seven of those calls were for a “threat” or some type of domestic violence, but most were cleared without a report. The July 4, 2006, call was made by “Mr. Reginald” (Avery’s first name) and accompanied by a 760 code, according to a mainframe print-out from Prince George’s County computer-aided dispatch system obtained by The Daily Signal.
That 760 code is the department’s clearance code for “arrest,” the Prince George County Police Department confirmed. That call was not cleared for four hours. Avery says it was Clarke who was arrested. Clarke has not addressed the specific incident.
The DOJ official’s ex-husband also shared with Jones that on the night of the incident, he called 911 due to his injury and the “cops came because [his] finger was cut off.” (Avery clarified to The Daily Signal that the finger was sliced to the bone, not cut off.) Police allegedly decided to arrest Clarke, and Avery said he went to the emergency room in Bowie, Maryland, for the injury.
Jones and Avery speculated via 2021 text messages about why Clarke would hide the arrest.
“I assume she just thinks she won’t get caught,” Jones queried, to which Avery responded at the time, “Yes, the arrogance has always been there. But I don’t understand lying on a federal application.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Asked Ex-Husband to Say She Wasn’t an Abuser During Confirmation Process, Ex Alleges appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: A group of conservative leaders is calling on the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Kristen Clarke, to resign from her leadership position following an explosive report from The Daily Signal.
“The American people have lost trust in your ability to lead the Civil Rights Division,” reads a letter to Clarke, signed by Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller, American Accountability Foundation President Tom Jones, Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins, and CatholicVote President Brian Burch. “We request that you resign immediately.”
The Daily Signal published a report on Tuesday highlighting evidence that Clarke had not disclosed a 2006 arrest and subsequent expungement during her 2021 nomination to the DOJ—and then explicitly denied ever having been arrested to Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton.
Clarke has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal, though the DOJ acknowledged receipt of these requests. She did speak to CNN on Wednesday, however, confirming that she did not disclose the arrest and expungement and alleging that her ex-husband Reginald Avery domestically abused her. He denied this in a statement to The Daily Signal.
The letter to Clarke from conservative leaders, sent Friday to the DOJ official, repeatedly references The Daily Signal’s reporting and attaches a copy of the Tuesday report itself. The letter also points to Clarke’s enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act against pro-life activists.
“The American people deserve a Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice led with honesty and integrity,” the letter says. “Since taking over the Civil Rights Division, you have weaponized the Department of Justice by wielding the FACE Act against pro-life Americans in an unprecedented manner—even while standing idly by as churches and pro-life pregnancy centers are vandalized, and Jewish students are unable to attend class on college campuses.”
Jones, one of the signers of the letter, began digging into Clarke’s background during her nomination process and spoke to Avery around the same time, as The Daily Signal previously reported. Avery told Jones at the time that Clarke attacked him with a knife, slicing his finger to the bone, during a domestic dispute in July 2006.
“The accusations against Kristen Clarke of lying to Congress and domestic violence are deeply troubling,” Jones told The Daily Signal on Friday. “Clearly she does not possess the character or integrity to be in any position of power. She must resign now.”
On Thursday evening, the New York Post Editorial Board similarly called on Clarke to step down in an editorial titled: “Kristen Clarke lied and must step down from the DOJ — NOW.”
“Clarke’s now arguing that because the arrest was expunged, she wasn’t required to disclose it to lawmakers,” the New York Post Editorial Board wrote. “That’s precisely the kind of razor-sharp logic that top Biden appointees are known for.”
“Then again,” the board continued. “Clarke’s the same dunderhead who muffed a major question about First Amendment litigation last year, claiming in a congressional hearing to be totally unaware of the lawsuit by the state of Missouri against the president over government efforts against ‘disinformation’ — a huge civil rights issue where Team Biden had lost and was appealing to the Supreme Court.”
The New York Post Editorial Board added: “Her defense now is beyond pathetic. She told an unambiguous lie to Congress. Was she thinking she’d never get caught, or that if she did, her political connections would protect her?”
CNN published Clarke’s allegations in a report headlined “DOJ civil rights leader says she was a victim of abuse in extraordinary statement.” That report is drawing accusations from conservative media that the outlet sought to curry favor with President Joe Biden’s DOJ through its framing.
“CNN propagandist Hannah Rabinowitz was asked by DOJ to spread this info op and she complied, hiding the explosive journalism which provoked it,” tweeted Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway.
“Amazing,” noted The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross. “After @MaryMargOlohan reports that DOJ’s Kristen Clarke lied about being arrested, Clarke runs to CNN with a claim that she lied only because she was the victim of domestic abuse. And CNN spins it with the typical ‘conservatives pounce’ framing.”
Clarke did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
The Daily Signal previously reported that Clarke, who oversees investigations into violations of the FACE Act, has used FACE to charge dozens of pro-life individuals since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. This includes Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven arrested at gunpoint by the FBI and charged with violating FACE in September 2022 (a jury found Houck was not guilty in January 2023, and the DOJ has not commented on this verdict publicly).
Enacted in 1994, the FACE Act prohibits threats of force, obstruction, and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services. It applies not only to abortion clinics, but also to pro-life pregnancy centers and houses of worship.
Though Clarke is the helm of the DOJ’s FACE Act enforcements, she is a vocal abortion proponent who has denounced pro-life pregnancy centers, as The Washington Free Beacon’s Ross previously reported.
The DOJ has charged only five pro-abortion individuals with violating the FACE Act when they attacked pro-life pregnancy centers, even though hundreds of pregnancy centers and Catholic churches have been attacked since May 2022, when the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked, indicating Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.
DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has charged zero individuals with FACE for attacking Catholic churches, though it has charged other individuals with hate crimes with defacing a synagogue with neo-Nazi symbols and attempting to burn down a church that planned to host drag show events.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Conservative Leaders Call on DOJ’s Kristen Clarke to Resign Following Daily Signal Report appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The Justice Department’s Kristen Clarke confirmed Wednesday that she did not disclose an arrest and expungement during her confirmation to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, alleging that she was a victim of domestic abuse.
The Daily Signal reported Tuesday evening that Clarke, who testified in 2021 to senators that she had never been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime, was involved in a violent domestic dispute with her now ex-husband, one in which he alleged that she sliced his finger to the bone with a knife.
The Daily Signal has repeatedly reached out to Clarke about the incident since February with no response, though the DOJ acknowledged receipt.
In a statement to CNN, she addressed the matter, saying she was not required to disclose the expungement. She also told CNN that she was “subjected to years long abuse and domestic violence at the hands of [her] ex-husband.”
NEW: DOJ's Kristen Clarke testified during her confirmation hearings that she was never arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime. I've obtained messages and records indicating Clarke may have been…less than forthcoming with this statement.https://t.co/Wxcusa4yXU
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) April 30, 2024
“This was a terrorizing and traumatizing period that I have sought to put behind me to promote my personal health, healing, and well-being. The physical and emotional scars, the emotional abuse and exploitation, and the lying are things that no woman or mother should ever have to endure,” Clarke continued.
“When given the option to speak about such traumatic incidents in my life, I have chosen not to,” Clarke added. “I didn’t believe during my confirmation process and I don’t believe now that I was obligated to share a fully expunged matter from my past.”
Clarke has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.
In a statement to The Daily Signal on Thursday, Avery called CNN’s story “a hit piece” and denied that he had domestically abused Clarke.
“I deny it of course,” he said, “and think this a sad and pathetic effort to make herself a victim, and is revealing of her character.”
CNN’s report did not include Avery’s allegations that Clarke sliced his finger with a knife on the night of July 4, 2006. The CNN report also does not link to The Daily Signal’s reporting.
“I was seeing another woman,” Avery shared in a May 2021 text message exchange with the American Accountability Foundation’s Tom Jones. “She was angry. Attacked me with a knife. I instinctively grabbed it. As I said earlier, I’m not blameless.”
“That’s the story,” Avery insisted. “That’s what happened. She went to jail.”
Prince George’s County Police Department records show that the department was called on nine different occasions by someone at Avery’s and Clarke’s Upper Marlboro, Maryland, household between May 2003 and December 2007.
Seven of those calls were for a “threat” or some type of domestic violence, but most were cleared without a report. The July 4, 2006, call was made by “Mr. Reginald” (Avery’s first name) and accompanied by a 760 code, according to a mainframe print-out from Prince George’s County computer-aided dispatch system obtained by The Daily Signal. That 760 code is the department’s clearance code for “arrest,” the Prince George County Police Department confirmed.
The DOJ official’s ex-husband also shared with Jones that on the night of the incident, he called 911 due to his injury and the “cops came because [his] finger was cut off.” (Avery clarified to The Daily Signal that the finger was sliced to the bone, not cut off.) Police allegedly decided to arrest Clarke, and Avery said he went to the emergency room in Bowie, Maryland, for the injury. He does not have photos of the injury.
During her confirmation, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton asked Clarke: “Since becoming a legal adult, have you ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person?”
Clarke responded, “No,” according to responses she submitted to the Senate under oath in a document called “Questions for the Record.”
She was asked by the Senate if she was ever arrested. Full stop. And she said no. In normal people world, we call that lying. (The lawyers call it perjuring yourself.) https://t.co/c2AlilnPx0
— Rachel Bovard (@rachelbovard) May 1, 2024
On Tuesday evening, Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee called for Clarke’s resignation.
“Kristen Clarke is in charge of enforcing civil rights laws,” Lee said in a statement posted to X. “She enforces those laws aggressively against anyone who sneezes near an abortion clinic. And not at all against those who vandalize churches. She lied under oath during her confirmation proceedings, and should resign.”
“She lied under oath to mask her arrest for committing a violent crime, yet she zealously prosecutes peaceful pro-life protesters,” the senator added.
The post DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Confirms She Did Not Disclose Arrest, Alleges Domestic Abuse appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee is calling for the resignation of Kristen Clarke, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“Kristen Clarke is in charge of enforcing civil rights laws,” Lee said in a statement posted to X on Tuesday evening. “She enforces those laws aggressively against anyone who sneezes near an abortion clinic. And not at all against those who vandalize churches. She lied under oath during her confirmation proceedings, and should resign.”
“She lied under oath to mask her arrest for committing a violent crime, yet she zealously prosecutes peaceful pro-life protesters,” the senator added.
Kristen Clarke is in charge of enforcing civil rights laws.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 1, 2024
She enforces those laws aggressively against anyone who sneezes near an abortion clinic.
And not at all against those who vandalize churches.
She lied under oath during her confirmation proceedings, and should resign. https://t.co/5tHpaG4a2W
Lee weighed in on Clarke following a Daily Signal report revealing that Clarke, who testified in 2021 to senators that she had never been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime, was involved in a violent domestic dispute with her now ex-husband, one in which he alleged that she sliced his finger to the bone with a knife.
Court documents, records, and text messages obtained by The Daily Signal indicate that Clarke was arrested, but that arrest was ultimately expunged.
“Since becoming a legal adult, have you ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person?” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked then-nominee Clarke in 2021, to which she responded, “No,” according to responses she submitted to the Senate under oath in a document called “Questions for the Record.”
Neither Clarke nor the DOJ has responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal. The FBI, asked about the background checks it performed on Clarke, declined to comment.
Ed Whelan, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center where he holds the Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies, similarly called for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to demand Clarke’s resignation.
“Kristen Clarke, loony ideologue at DOJ on transgender issues, appears to have flat-out lied under oath during her confirmation process when she denied ever having been arrested,” Whelan said in an X post on Tuesday night.
“Per article, she was arrested in 2006 for attacking her then-husband with a knife and slicing his finger to the bone,” he continued, before adding: “President Biden and AG [Attorney General Merrick] Garland should demand her resignation.”
“Expungement of arrest record has consequences under Maryland law, but it can’t excuse Kristen Clarke for falsely stating to Congress during her confirmation process that she had never been arrested for committing a violent crime,” Whelan said.
Kristen Clarke, loony ideologue at DOJ on transgender issues, appears to have flat-out lied under oath during her confirmation process when she denied ever having been arrested. Per article, she was arrested in 2006 for attacking her then-husband with a knife and slicing his… https://t.co/TIc9uohRPE
— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) April 30, 2024
Whelan further suggested that the establishment media may abstain from covering Clarke out of a bias for Democratic nominees.
“If news broke that controversial DOJ official in Republican administration lied during confirmation process to conceal arrest for violent crime, it would be front-page news in NYT and WaPo,” Whelan said, referring to The New York Times and The Washington Post. “We’ll see if they pay any attention to Kristen Clarke’s lie.”
Clarke was nominated by then-President-elect Biden on Jan. 7, 2021, and later confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 25, 2021, to lead the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
The Daily Signal previously reported that Clarke, who oversees investigations into violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, has used FACE to charge dozens of pro-life individuals since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. This includes Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven arrested at gunpoint by the FBI and charged with violating FACE in September 2022.
A jury found Houck was not guilty in January 2023.
The post ‘She Lied Under Oath’: Sen. Mike Lee Calls for DOJ’s Kristen Clarke to Resign appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Eva Edl turned 10 years old in a World War II-era death camp.
She believes she may die in a United States prison.
Charged by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, Edl faces up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 fines. She is about to turn 89 years old.
“When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” she said thoughtfully in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. “Right now, I am ambivalent. … I’m doing the best I can to get ready. Haven’t talked to a funeral director yet.”
“I’m just being sensible,” she added. “There’s no guarantee that I survive it.”
Drawing on her brutal experiences with communism in what was then Yugoslavia, she refuses to underestimate those who have the power to oppress her, recalling how her mother couldn’t believe they were in danger until it was too late.
“We haven’t done anything wrong! Who would harm us?” she remembered her mother saying.
“Then our whole people was destroyed,” Edl said. “We hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as I know.”
As Danube Swabians, an ethnic German-speaking group, Edl and her family were rounded up in the aftermath of World War II by soldiers under the direction of Yugoslavia’s communist leader, Josip Broz, commonly known as Tito.
She described how she was shipped off in cattle cars to a concentration camp in Yugoslavia at age 9: “We were packed body to body, and being a small child, I could hardly breathe. We had no food, no water … .”
The camp (named Gakowa, or Gakovo, according to Edl) was “primitive,” she said, and its purpose was the extermination of the Danube Swabians. Many of those in Gakowa with Edl died from starvation or disease and were buried in mass graves.
She slept on straw. She had her one dress. Very little food.
“You couldn’t wash your clothes because all you have is that one dress,” she explained. “So, you were filthy. And then we had diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, and rats and anything you could imagine, and we had no toilet facilities to contain all that. We had an outhouse. Well, how do you have masses of people with diarrhea just go to one outhouse? So, you know what happened. And filth and disease went rampant.”
Her mother, forced to work as a slave laborer in the fields, escaped and smuggled herself into the camp in a wagon full of corn, determined to find her young daughter among the thousands of prisoners, Edl says. Soldiers poked through the load of corn with bayonets, just barely missing her mother.
Edl’s mother finally found her young daughter lying on a pile of rancid straw, starving, too weak to walk, “festering” with lice and other creatures.
The scene was so horrific that it caused Edl’s mother to rush outside and vomit, although Edl did not learn this until years later. At the time, she was so weak she could barely register her mother’s presence, and she could scarcely recognize her mother, thin and emaciated as she was. But it seemed to Edl a miracle that they had been reunited—even in a concentration camp.
“I just couldn’t believe it was her,” she explained. “It took a while.”
Edl’s stories of her time in the death camp feature many brave women: her grandmother, who voluntarily chose to go to the concentration camp with her in order to protect her; her mother, who repeatedly risked death to reunite her children and get them safely to the United States; and her sister, who, forced by a soldier to dig her own grave, looked him in the eye and dared him to kill her. (He didn’t, according to Edl.)
So, it should come as no surprise that Edl, after she came to the United States in 1955 and was exposed to a human rights crisis she had never before heard of, decided that she must do whatever was in her power to save lives.
Edl took an English course around 1968, and during the course, someone brought up whether or not the United States should legalize abortion. (Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that there was a constitutional right to abortion, did not come about until 1973.)
“I didn’t know what [abortion] meant,” Edl said. She was blown away by the explanation she received. As she spoke with The Daily Signal, she reflected that an unborn baby is not a tumor, but a life. No one should have the ability to just end a baby’s life, she said.
“I tried to speak up in that subject, but I must have done a very bad job because I don’t think I convinced the person that I was speaking with. And after that, I just brought the subject up all the time because it bothered me that people would actually think of killing their own children.”
During the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, she first learned that abortions don’t take place in a secretive, underhanded fashion; rather, that unborn babies are aborted within abortion clinics, places that openly advertise their gruesome services. Edl was shocked.
Hundreds of pro-life protesters demonstrated outside the convention beginning in July 1988. In October 1988, police arrested about 400 protesters in connection to those demonstrations, The New York Times reported.
It was during that time period, after discussing the matter with her husband and getting his blessing, that Edl joined the protesters as they prayed outside an abortion clinic in Atlanta and attempted to dissuade women from going inside and aborting their babies.
“We are doing what we are condemning others for,” Edl says she told her husband at the time. “This is what people should have done for us.”
She was arrested that day with many others, led by Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry.
Edl says the police treated them brutally, dislocating the arms of many of the protesters arrested. The pro-life activists had been warned that police were prepared to be brutal, she explained, and to avoid any appearance of accosting police, the activists crawled on their knees rather than walked.
“I was weeping the whole time,” she said. “I must have left a trail of tears … .”
She was inconsolable that America would even consider aborting its unborn.
“America, in my eyes, was this country of justice and opportunity and everything that is good,” she said. “A beacon for us, over there, that didn’t know what all that meant, because we had nothing but oppression from whoever was ruling us at the time.”
When an officer put his hand on her shoulders, she froze, as she had been instructed.
“I heard somebody say, ‘Just use your nightstick,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, here they come. They’re going to club me.’ They just put the club, the nightstick, behind my arms. They hung me on it and nearly dislocated my shoulders, and just threw me on the bus. Other people got their shoulders totally dislocated; others got their heads bashed in. Some ended up in the hospital.”
That was her first “rescue”—the term that pro-life activists use for their attempts to stop abortions from taking place at an abortion clinic. Under the FACE Act, such activity is considered a crime.
The FACE Act prohibits use of force, obstruction, or property damage intended to interfere with “reproductive health care services.” Though it theoretically protects houses of worship and pregnancy resource centers, as well as abortion clinics, the Biden administration’s Justice Department has largely used FACE to prosecute pro-life activists like Edl.
Since 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Justice Department has hit a total of 40 pro-life activists with FACE-related charges at five different rescues, or “blockades” as the DOJ calls them.
Edl describes a rescue in the following way: “We would put our bodies in front of the entrance of the abortion clinic, which I call the ‘death camp,’ so nobody could come in and kill the babies.”
Since that October 1988 incident, Edl says, she has been part of more than 50 rescues throughout the United States. She also says that she has been arrested about 50 times.
Now, she faces prison time.
“To the best of my knowledge, I am facing around 11 years in prison and $350,000 fines,” she said.
The Justice Department has thrice charged Edl with violating the FACE Act, first for an “August 2020 blockade” of a Sterling Heights, Michigan, abortion clinic; second for an April 2021 “blockade” in Saginaw, Michigan; and third for a March 2021 incident at a Nashville, Tennessee, abortion clinic. The DOJ charged eight defendants in the Sterling Heights incident and 11 defendants in the Nashville incident.
Edl maintains that she never committed any violence against those at the abortion clinics. (The DOJ would not respond to requests for comment about its charges against her.) She says that her actions are completely justified, given that she is trying to save the lives of babies about to be aborted.
“Let me liken it to something,” Edl explained thoughtfully as we discussed her arrests around the country. She referred back to her time in Gakowa. “When we were rounded up to be killed, we were placed in cattle cars, and our train was headed toward the extermination camp. What if citizens of my country would have overcome their fear, and a number of them stood on those railroad tracks between the gate of the entrance to the death camp and the train? The train would have to stop. And while the guards on those trains would be busy rounding up the ones that were in front of the train, another group could have come in, pried open our cattle car and possibly set us free, but nobody did.”
She has heard stories that people stood by the roadside and wept as the cattle cars went by. “But that didn’t help us any,” she said.
“So, when we place our bodies between the woman and the clinic, we buy time to get our sidewalk counselors the opportunity to speak with women, and hopefully open their hearts with love for their babies and let their babies live,” the death camp survivor said.
“After all,” she added, “we offer them everything there is, including adoptions. I’ve offered to adopt babies on the spot … we’re standing between the killer and the victim.”
Congress passed the FACE Act in 1994, and then-President Bill Clinton signed it into law that same year. Spearheaded by the now-deceased Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the legislation was a response to attacks on abortionists and abortion clinics. Pro-life advocates made sure that the legislation included clauses stating that it also protects churches and pregnancy resource centers.
In recent months, some conservative lawmakers and activists have called for the legislation to be repealed, arguing that it has been weaponized against pro-life activists.
They point to the large number of DOJ FACE charges against pro-life activists, noting that hundreds of churches and pregnancy resource centers have been attacked by pro-abortion vandals since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned. The DOJ has charged only five pro-abortion vandals in connection with attacks on Florida pregnancy centers and an Ohio pregnancy center.
It appears that no vandals have been charged with FACE for attacking churches.
Edl, who has followed the FACE Act and its application since its inception, said she was arrested in Kennedy’s office when she went to talk to him about it in the 1990s.
“Instead of talking to us, he had us arrested,” she said of Kennedy.
She believes that she and her fellow pro-life activists are being targeted through the FACE Act because they “are in the way of [the Biden administration’s] agenda.” She has lived through 13 presidents in her lifetime, and she says that Biden is the worst of them.
Edl and the other defendants accused of violating the FACE Act have said that they are not allowed to show images or pictures in their trials. They are not allowed to say that they acted in order to save lives—the lives of unborn babies.
At the end of the day, however, she seems very at peace about the possible penalties. She’s getting her affairs in order. She had a bench trial in federal court in Nashville, where a federal judge found her and several others guilty of violating the FACE Act.
Edl and the other three defendants face a maximum of six months in prison, five years of supervised release, and fines of up to $10,000 in this case, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee.
She will be sentenced July 30, she said. And her next trial is in federal court in Detroit on Aug. 6.
“I feel very strongly, because of my background, that human life is sacred,” she said simply. “Government does not have the authority to permit what God forbids.”
“And murder is forbidden by God.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: She Survived a Death Camp. Facing Biden DOJ Charges, She Is Prepared to Die in Prison appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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