Dec 19, 2024, 7:48 AM ET

Hearing recounts weaponization of DOJ against pro-lifers: ‘Intended to instill abject fear’

In a hearing on Wednesday, the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government of the Committee on the Judiciary examined the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) unequal applications of the FACE Act, which began after the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The hearing, “Revisiting the Implications of the FACE Act: Part 2,” was a continuation of the first hearing on the issue in May.

Individuals speaking at the hearing emphasized that pro-life activists jailed due to alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act should be pardoned by President-elect Donald Trump, and demonstrated how President Joe Biden’s administration weaponized the DOJ against pro-lifers.

Chip Roy

Congressman Chip Roy spoke at the hearing about the need to right the wrongs committed under Biden; he previously sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding they leave all records and files pertaining to FACE Act investigations and convictions after Biden leaves office.

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“It’s not enough to merely end Biden-era discrimination,” Roy said during the hearing. “We must act to reverse these wrongful imprisonments, reuniting families who have been collateral damage of this administration. The Trump administration should consider pardoning and commuting the sentences of FACAC defendants who have been victims of this targeted harassment. Unequal application of the law is not truly law. It is tyranny imposed on those who didn’t have the power by those who do have it. That’s contrary to everything we believe as Americans.”

Paul Vaughn

Powerful testimony at the hearing was also provided by Paul Vaughn, a pro-life activist and father who was arrested following a raid in which numerous FBI agents swarmed his home with guns drawn, in front of Vaughn’s terrified wife and children. Vaughn’s only ‘crime’ was entering the building where the Carafem abortion facility is located in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. He never entered the abortion business itself, never interacted with the abortion facility staff, and didn’t block any entrances or persons.

“It was like church service in there, people sitting in the floor in the hallway, people singing hymns, reading scripture, praying,” he previously said of the protest. “The purpose is to try to save babies today and most importantly be obedient to Christ.”

In the hearing, Vaughn — who was not sentenced to any time in prison — spoke of how traumatizing the raid and subsequent arrest was for his family.

“My wife and children were terrorized and I was kidnapped at gunpoint by four armed men,” he began. “I had just sent three of my children to the car so I could take them to school when the house began to shake from a loud banging near the front door. I heard men shouting on my porch, ‘Open up, FBI.’ The banging continued. As I looked out a side window to check the location of my children, I saw two unmarked SUVs with lights flashing, but I did not see my children.”

He went on:

The banging continued, and I heard more shouting. I opened the curtains on the front door to find three men with guns trained on the door. I asked who they were looking for, and they replied, ‘We’re here for you.’ They did not identify me or provide identification for themselves.

As I believe there was an imminent threat to the safety of my wife and seven children, who were home that day, I determined to surrender myself to them, hoping that they were legitimate law enforcement. I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, staring down the barrels of both a pistol and an automatic weapon pointed at my head.

As I did, I asked what authority they were operating under and if they had any identification. I later learned at the same time, three of my children, ages 12, 14, and 18, were being detained in the side yard on the edge of the woods by a fourth armed man.

Vaughn said he was never shown a warrant or any form of identification from the agents present before being arrested; it was only once he was handcuffed and in the police car that the warrant was presented to him.

“Make no mistake, this was an armed conflict, and I was unarmed,” he said. “Lethal force was abused and to abridge my God-given and constitutionally secured rights. At the moment of being placed in handcuffs, I became a slave to ideological tyrants, either the ones holding the weapons or the ones they obeyed.”

Vaughn then stated that he had led a team of sidewalk counselors outside the abortion facility 18 months prior to his arrest, noting that the Biden administration had turned ideological alignment with those who sat at the abortion facility doors that day into a crime. “I did nothing that was outside constitutionally protected free speech and religious freedom,” Vaughn explained. “I did nothing that day that I’ve not done many times since FACE was passed in 1994. I did not sit in, I broke no laws, federal or local, and I was not arrested the day of the event. But yes, member Scanlon, I did pray that day. I had talked with the police chief and lead negotiating team. I helped the police and the pro-lifers by messaging back and forth. The police spokesperson complimented us on the peaceful nature of the event on the evening news. The lead negotiator testified for us in our federal trial.”

While the pro-life movement is regularly accused of violence, Vaughn said there are several aspects of violence that are routinely ignored.

“There is violence committed against every unborn child and every abortion. There’s violence committed by aggravated fathers or other family members of aborted children. And there’s violence being done to pro-lifers by our own government,” he said. “Any serious conversation about violence going forward needs to include these three facts. The FACE Act was ostensibly passed because of violence. But as my family knows very well, all it did was give violence the cover of law and place it in the hands of the government.”

Erin Hawley

Erin Hawley, senior counsel and vice president at Alliance Defending Freedom, then testified about the selective enforcement of the FACE Act, and how the Biden administration has failed to investigate or prosecute the acts of violence and intimidation against pro-life pregnancy centers and churches.

“The text of the FACE Act is clear. Its protections apply to, quote, reproductive health services, which is broadly defined to include not only abortion facilities, but also pregnancy centers. The FACE Act also protects churches and other houses of worship from violence, vandalism, and intimidation,” she said.

“But instead of applying the FACE Act in an even-handed way, the Biden DOJ has weaponized the act to target pro-life advocates. Since 2001, it has brought criminal or civil cases under the FACE Act against 55 individuals, 50 of them pro-life. It has charged 24 cases under the FACE Act, but only two in defense of pregnancy centers. Since the Dobbs decision was leaked in May of 2022, there have been close to 100 pregnancy care centers that have been vandalized, spray painted, or firebombed. Yet only 8% of the Biden DOJ’s FACE Act cases have been filed to protect pregnancy centers; again, those two cases.”

She continued, “As for churches, again expressly protected by the FACE Act, the Family Research Council has identified 436 instances of threats or violence in 2023 alone. Shockingly, the Biden Department of Justice has failed to initiate a single FACE Act prosecution to protect a house of worship.”

Steve Crampton

Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Steve Crampton, an attorney who represents Paul Vaughn, also testified.

Crampton argued that, despite claiming to include pro-life pregnancy centers and churches, the FACE Act “was from its inception always about abortion,” which is why it was so easily weaponized by the Biden administration.

Crampton added that the Biden administration used the FACE Act along with the Ku Klux Klan Act charges of “conspiracy against rights” to make potential prison time even longer, with pro-life activists facing up to 10 years in federal prison. “As great as the abuse of FACE was in these cases, I submit that it pales in comparison to the use of the Conspiracy Against Rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 241, to transform a misdemeanor FACE violation with a maximum penalty of six months in prison and a fine of up to $10,000, into a felony with a maximum penalty of ten years imprisonment and a fine up to $250,000,” he said. “The utter lack of proportion between the underlying crime and its penalty and the conspiracy and its penalty is breathtaking and virtually unprecedented.”

Yet due to Roe‘s reversal, Crampton said the FACE Act needs to be reevaluated entirely, as he said it’s no longer constitutional.

“FACE has not only lost its purpose, it has also lost its constitutional validity. Under the Supreme Court’s more recent precedents on content-based laws, FACE is plainly unconstitutional because it discriminates against expressive activity based on content and/or viewpoint,” he said, and added, “In a nation that doesn’t simply tolerate political dissent and protests but celebrates them, the use of this conspiracy statute against these individuals who were willing to interpose themselves on behalf of the most innocent and helpless children is abhorrent and indefensible. It was purely punitive, intended to instill abject fear in any who would even consider standing up to the abortion industry, and to suppress the expression of pro-life views.”

Editor’s Note, 12/20/24: Some of the details in this article have been corrected since original publication.

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