FBI built an "EDUOFFICIALS" tag and opened 25 assessments on school-board "threats." Prosecutions found: none

The Justice Department now says the 2021 crackdown on school-board "threats" amounted to this: a new FBI threat tag, 25 assessments, one full investigation, and no prosecutions the department's own investigators could find.

Those numbers come from "The 2026 Report to Expose the Weaponization of Government Against Parents in Schools," a 273-page report released this week by DOJ's Weaponization Working Group and dated Oct. 5. They describe how the FBI carried out former Attorney General Merrick Garland's Oct. 4, 2021 memorandum. Virginia parents, especially in Loudoun County, were at the center of the fight that produced that memo.

Garland's memo ordered the FBI and every U.S. attorney to meet with local law enforcement within 30 days. It also told them to open "dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response." Rep. Jim Jordan, speaking at a June DOJ roundtable reprinted in the report, called it a "snitch line" to "report on parents."

The bureau moved quickly. An FBI document reprinted in the report states plainly that "the EDUOFFICIALS threat tag was created in response to the 10/04/21 AG's memorandum." A joint message from the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division and its Counterterrorism Division went out on Oct. 20, 2021. It asked agents to apply the tag to investigations and assessments of threats against educators and school board members, to "help scope this threat on a national level."

That directive did not sit well with everyone at the bureau. A reporter's Nov. 15, 2021 inquiry to the FBI is reprinted in the report. It says an FBI employee had raised concerns with lawmakers about the directive, believing the tag "suggests the bureau is collecting information on parents who voice concerns at school board meetings."

Here is what the report says the tag produced, drawing on the FBI's response to the House Judiciary Committee and the committee's own findings. The FBI opened 25 "Guardian" assessments tied to school board threats. Six ran out of the Counterterrorism Division, 17 involved the Criminal Investigations Division, and two involved the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. One became a "Full Investigation." According to a whistleblower cited by the House committee, the FBI investigated one mother because she belonged to a "right-wing mom's group" and "is a gun owner," and a father because "he rail[ed] against the government."

An internal FBI tally from the period, also reprinted, counted 16 open EDUOFFICIALS Guardians across 13 field offices, including Washington Field. Five were tagged to the Counterterrorism Division.

The report's bottom line: "The Weaponization Working Group is unaware of any prosecutions by the Department of Justice that arose from those investigations."

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward put it this way at the roundtable: "How many prosecutions were brought under the Garland Memo? No, it was merely the threat of prosecution that silenced so many."

Loudoun parent Scott Smith described that effect at the same session. Smith was arrested at a June 2021 Loudoun County School Board meeting weeks after his daughter was sexually assaulted at school. He said meetings went from "standing-room-only, 3-400 people, to just a handful" after the memo came out.

Plenty of people inside government saw the problem coming, according to the emails. One National Security Division attorney asked to be removed from Garland's new task force. He wrote that DOJ does not "start a narrowly focused task force every time some group believes they are the subject of threats." At the Department of Homeland Security, when DHS circulated an assessment linking school threats to opposition to mask and vaccine mandates and to "Perception of Critical Race Theory," one FBI official urged the bureau not to "coordinate on this or provide any comments back." He called it a "politically charged paper." Even so, the task force kept going. In January 2022, according to the report, the memo's drafter, Kevin Chambers, confirmed that it was still tracking threats and investigating parents.

The new leadership at DOJ is promising redress. The report lists five steps. Parents and others who were the subject of a Guardian assessment under the Garland memo "will be offered the opportunity to review the Guardian." A disclaimer will be added to those assessments noting the memo "raised serious constitutional concerns." The department will review the files of everyone investigated and "issue a formal apology" where it finds a constitutional violation. A $1.5 million grant to the National Association of School Resource Officers will fund training on parents' rights. The Office of Justice Programs will prioritize funding to train teachers and staff on parents' First Amendment rights.

FBI Director Kash Patel told the roundtable that "the FBI has absolutely no business" interfering with what parents say at school board meetings. He also said the bureau has fired personnel tied to what he called weaponization.

Virginia parents who think they may have been swept up in an EDUOFFICIALS assessment now have a reason to ask. The report does not explain how the review process will work, or whether any of the Guardians involved Virginia residents.

Email the Loudoun County School Board:
April Chandler, april.chandler@lcps.org,
Anne Donohue, anne.donohue@lcps.org,
Deana Griffiths, deana.griffiths@lcps.org,
Ross Svenson, ross.stevenson@lcps.org,
Kari LaBell, kari.labell@lcps.org,
Jon Pepper, jonathon.pepper@lcps.org,
Lauren Shernoff, lauren.shernoff@lcps.org,
Sumera Rashid, sumera.rashid@lcps.org,
Amy Riccardi, amy.riccardi@lcps.org,

Loudoun County is a county in Northern Virginia. Its county seat is Leesburg.