DOJ Report Alleges Biased FACE Act Enforcement Targeting Pro-Life Activists

The Department of Justice under President Trump released a devastating nearly 900-page report Tuesday that lays bare how the Biden administration turned federal law into a weapon against Americans who oppose abortion. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act known as FACE was passed in 1994 to protect both abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy centers. Under Joe Biden it became a one-way ratchet aimed squarely at Christians and conservatives who dared to pray or demonstrate outside facilities where unborn children are killed.

The report from the department's Weaponization Working Group examined more than 700,000 internal records. What it found should alarm every American who still believes the justice system is supposed to treat people equally regardless of their beliefs. Biden's prosecutors coordinated directly with abortion advocacy groups including Planned Parenthood the National Abortion Federation and the Feminist Majority Foundation. They shared intelligence built target lists and pursued pro-life activists with a fervor that was never applied to those attacking crisis pregnancy centers.

Emails uncovered in the review read like opposition research from a political campaign rather than the work of impartial federal law enforcement. One top DOJ official gushed about an abortion activist calling the person an MVP for feeding the government tips on upcoming pro-life protests. Abortion groups supplied the FBI and prosecutors with dossiers containing photographs personal details and travel plans of individuals who had not even been charged with a crime. These files were treated as reliable intelligence. Federal agents then used them to monitor American citizens for years before swooping in with arrests.

The disparities in enforcement are impossible to ignore. The Biden DOJ created a special national task force just weeks after the Supreme Court returned abortion law to the states in 2022. That task force led by career lawyer Sanjay Patel worked hand in glove with the very organizations that profit from abortion. Prosecutors sought maximum sentences for pro-life defendants while downplaying or ignoring violence directed at pro-life facilities. When pregnancy resource centers were firebombed vandalized or invaded the response from the same Justice Department was often muted or nonexistent. This was not equal justice. It was selective prosecution based on ideology.

The report details how prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence from defense attorneys pushed to exclude jurors who held religious beliefs and advocated for sentences far longer than the law's own structure contemplated. Peaceful protesters who sang hymns or knelt in prayer outside clinics faced multi-year prison terms. Some were convicted for blocking access even as video evidence showed they were nonviolent. The contrast with left-wing activists who have blocked roads courthouses and even the White House with little consequence could not be more stark.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made the point clearly in a statement accompanying the report. This department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice. No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.

The findings arrive after President Trump pardoned many of these federally convicted pro-life activists during his first week back in office. Those pardons were necessary because the cases themselves were tainted by the very misconduct now documented in exhaustive detail. Many of the activists were ordinary people grandmothers nurses and clergy who believed they had a moral duty to stand for the unborn. The Biden administration treated them like domestic threats while actual violence against pro-life centers often went unpunished.

This report is the first in a series from the Weaponization Working Group which was established to examine politicized uses of federal power. Its conclusions about the FACE Act fit a larger pattern that ordinary citizens have watched unfold for years. The same administration that lectured the country about threats to democracy spent its time building databases on pro-life Americans in partnership with the abortion industry. Federal power was lent to one side of the culture war and then deployed with ruthless efficiency.

The implications reach far beyond abortion. When government agencies begin picking winners and losers based on ideology the rule of law itself erodes. Americans of all views should recognize the danger in allowing prosecutors to coordinate with political allies to target their opponents. The Biden DOJ did not simply enforce the FACE Act. It turned that statute into a political tool to intimidate and imprison citizens whose only offense was holding the wrong opinions about the sanctity of life.

The report's release comes as the country tries to move past the excesses of the prior administration. Whether the damage can be fully repaired depends on whether future officials treat these findings as a warning rather than an instruction manual. The evidence is now in black and white. The Biden Justice Department did not pursue equal justice under law. It pursued its political enemies with the full force of the federal government while shielding its ideological friends. That is not how a free republic is supposed to operate.