Sen. Josh Hawley slams Biden DOJ ‘weaponization’ against pro-lifers, traditional Catholics

(LifeSiteNews) — Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri questioned Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney General, on the most “disgraceful chapters” of weaponization carried out by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.

Hawley then secured her commitment to investigate the Biden administration’s most egregious violations of the trust of the American people by “weaponizing” the DOJ and FBI against conservative and religious citizens.

“We all know that weaponization has occurred like we’ve never seen it before in American history under this administration,” Hawley began during Bondi’s confirmation hearing. “In the last four years, this administration has carried out an unprecedented attack and campaign against people of faith.”

“It has been one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of the Justice Department and in the history of the FBI,” he said. “And I hope that you will reverse this and do right by every American citizen, including especially people of faith.”

“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, (and) firebombed,” recounted Hawley, noting that only two of those incidents had been investigated by the DOJ under Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland.

Hawley continued:

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 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.

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 (and) an FBI SWAT team 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.

Hawley then turned his attention to the FBI’s infamous 2023 memo labeling Latin Mass devotees as “Radical Traditionalists” whom the Bureau suspected of having ties to far-right white nationalists.

At the same time, he pointed out that the DOJ had been using the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an “official resource.”

He also zeroed in on the DOJ targeting of parents at school board meetings in October 2021 after the Biden administration solicited a letter from the National School Board Association calling for law enforcement scrutiny against parents who dared to question mask mandates to the teaching of critical race theory.