Back on October 27, Attorney General Merrick Garland was grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee. During that hearing, he was asked about his Oct. 4 memo announcing an investigation into alleged threats to school boards. Critics believed this was an effort to intimidate parents who were questioning the radical indoctrination of their children in the schools.

One of the concerns raised about Garland’s memo was that it relied on a letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA). That letter referred to parental criticism as potential domestic terrorism. Senators asked Garland for the data to back up the claims of threats to schools or violence but Garland was unable to produce it. He also claimed that the DOJ wasn’t looking at parents as domestic terrorists and that he was just trying to determine the extent of the problem.

But then a whistleblower gave a letter to Congress from the U.S. Attorney of Montana showing that the effort was being pursued by the FBI Counterterrorism Unit and that they were using designated threat tags to categorize school threats, making it clear it was being looked into as terrorism, contrary to what Garland said.

Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are now demanding that Garland come back and testify again, citing the whistleblower letter and the contradictions with Garland’s testimony.

Senate Judiciary GOP calls upon AG Merrick Garland to testify before them again: “We remain deeply concerned that your October 4 Memorandum is being used by the DOJ and the FBI as a basis to pursue investigations against American parents for First Amendment-protected activities.” pic.twitter.com/yMrnJ8iuCu

— Jerry Christmas 🎄🎅🏽 (@JerryDunleavy) November 30, 2021

They called Garland’s testimony “deeply misleading.”

“The FBI should be going after mobsters, not soccer moms. Attorney General Garland has told one story but the actions of some in the Department of Justice tell another,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., in an exclusive statement to Fox News. “He needs to return to the Judiciary Committee and give clear answers to the American people.”

In a letter Monday, Sasse and others requested Garland clarify his remarks and suggested they conflicted with information from an FBI whistleblower and U.S. attorney’s office. [….]

“During your testimony on October 27, you told the Senate Judiciary Committee that your Memorandum was merely about ‘setting up meetings,'” the lawmakers added.

“You stated that the ‘purpose of this Memorandum is to get our law enforcement to assess the extent of the problem’ and that the Memo ‘comes before investigations.’ When asked why the DOJ was treating parents at school boards as domestic terrorists, you said: ‘[m]y Memo says nothing about domestic terrorism, says nothing about parents committing any such things.’”

So what they need to do is take back Congress so they can hold these folks to account and be able to go after Garland for lying to Congress. But this is a good start, until then, to build more of a record to pursue a future case and to push Garland for more answers. They have him trapped in what is a big contradiction when he says he hasn’t classified it as terrorism, yet here is the Counterterrorism Unit looking into it. It’s hard to argue around that contradiction.