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Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) Said on Wednesday that Americans should “be afraid of your government” after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the FBI would investigate an alleged spike in threats against local school officials in amid protests against mask mandates and the addition of critical race theory to curricula.
“Moms in school boards are being told they are criminals, potential domestic terrorists, for the crime of dissent,” Paul told “Fox News Primetime,” “and I think criminalizing dissent is something that should scare us all. “
When host Ben Domenech asked Paul what he would say to Americans who fear that “if they go to their local school board and say the wrong thing, they’re going to end up on a list that Merrick Garland is looking for,” the the senator replied in no uncertain terms.
“I would say be scared. Be afraid of your government, ”said Paul.
“It’s a sad thing to say from a member of the government, but the point is that these lists already exist. For example, the people of northern Virginia who went to [protests], were then sought by the school council, by members of the school board and were the subject of reprisals [against] in a sort of legalistic way of trying to put them on some sort of list and chill their speech by letting them know there will be a penalty for showing up and protesting.
Garland’s announcement on Monday followed a letter to President Biden of the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which said “America’s public schools and its education officials are under immediate threat” and called on the White House to consider investigating threats against school administrators and staff. using tools provided by a variety of laws, including the 9/11 era Patriot Act.
“I think the problem is that it has become so normal to use the government to seek out and research your opponents,” said Paul, who cited the case of former Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Page’s communications were monitored by the FBI using warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Review Court as the office investigated allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election.
“There are people I know on the left who should have stepped forward and should have said how wrong it is to use this foreign intelligence tribunal – which uses a sub-constitutional standard – to continue a political campaign. “said Paul. “Yet the left – once it came to Trump, their hatred of Trump took precedence over everything else, and I have a feeling and fear that the left has become more authoritarian than we can. imagine it. “
“Look, there are all kinds of decorum laws, and there should be,” Paul said. “The stupid woman who goes in the bathroom, films Senator [Kyrsten] Movie theater [D-Ariz.] in a bathroom, it is illegal according to all local ordinances and you should punish that person.
“If you attend a school board meeting and disturb and don’t obey the rules of the school board meeting, then there will be local punishment,” he added. “But it has nothing to do with federal law, it has nothing to do with the Department of Justice. What Merrick Garland has done is try to stifle dissent and try to say, “Beware or Big Brother takes it out on you if you denounce my policies or Biden’s policies.” . “
Appearing on the same program, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) Called Garland’s decision “alarming” and “hypocritical.”
“It is alarming because [of] this idea that somehow if parents show up to a school board complaining, if somebody out there decides, “Well, we don’t like the tone of their voice. , we don’t like how loud he talks, we don’t like how often he shows up, “you can be denounced,” he told Domenech.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which should focus on things like organized crime, things like drug dealers, things like terrorism and others who seek to harm this country, will now divert resources to investigate parents because they shout too loudly, or maybe even rude at a school board hearing? ”
Rubio added that the DOJ’s action was hypocritical because “there are very few, if any, senators – certainly right-wingers, members of Congress as well – who have not been harassed in their private lives… So they’ve normalized that behavior when it comes to leftist protesters, but when a parent talks about a school board, they want to go after the FBI. It’s crazy.”
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