A Justice Department report found the FBI opened assessments on parents after Merrick Garland's 2021 school memo, including a mother flagged for gun ownership and Moms for Liberty membership.
Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich told Fox News Digital her organization feels vindication after a Justice Department Weaponization Working Group report on how the FBI handled parents who spoke up at school boards.
The Working Group reported that the FBI opened 25 “Guardian assessments” involving parents after then-Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4, 2021, memorandum on threats against school officials. One tip-driven assessment involved a mother identified as a gun owner who belonged to what the tip called a “right-wing mom’s group.” A joint Justice Department and Department of Education release identified that group as Moms for Liberty.
Descovich did not mince words about what the findings mean for families who showed up in 2021.
"My reaction and our reaction at Moms for Liberty is vindication,"
she said, adding that the group feels it is finally being heard.
The Justice Department’s own account, as reported in the Working Group material, tied the Garland memorandum to political pressure from the top. The memo, the department stated, “was the product of pressure exerted by the White House and wrongly weaponized the Department of Justice against parents.”
Emails described in that account show Garland issued the directive after being persuaded by Biden White House officials. The memorandum framed the issue as threats against school officials during a period of heated school-board fights over curriculum, transparency, and local control.
Internal personnel pushed back. They called the effort “ridiculous,” raised First Amendment concerns, and said it appeared political. That internal dissent sat alongside the public posture that treated engaged parents as a law-enforcement problem.
Fox News Digital reached out to the FBI and the White House for comment. The Department of Education pointed back to its press release and letter on the matter.
The report’s most concrete case landed on an ordinary parent. An FBI whistleblower disclosure described an assessment opened after a tip that noted the mother owned a gun and belonged to a “right-wing mom’s group.” Separate joint Justice Department and Education Department material named that organization as Moms for Liberty.
That sequence matters. A tip about lawful gun ownership and group membership was enough to put a parent into the FBI’s Guardian assessment channel. No public record in the reported findings required a violent act or a criminal plot, only the combination of parent advocacy, a firearm, and a conservative-labeled moms’ group.
Descovich said the broader climate matched what her members lived through after school-board meetings.
"Our parents were getting phone calls after attending school board meetings asking if they had mental health problems, if they had weapons in their home. They were given case numbers and file numbers. And this latest report that's come out and press release from the DOJ and the DOE acknowledging that fact and declaring that, officially, parents are not domestic terrorists. It's almost ridiculous. It's absurd that that's happened in America and that has to be the headline today that we're actually returning to normalcy."
Descovich described a chill that went well beyond one tip. Parents, she said, pulled back from public meetings and from open association with the group.
"Parents were afraid to show up. They were afraid to lose their jobs. They were members of our organization, sometimes privately and silently standing with us, but too afraid to speak out because of what our government did in the United States of America. We need to not forget where we were in 2021 as we go into these midterm elections."
She tied that fear to the federal response itself. In her account, the Biden-era Justice Department and FBI treated parents and Moms for Liberty as adversaries rather than citizens using lawful speech and petition rights at local boards.
"We have known since 2021 that the DOJ and the FBI under the Biden administration were basically enemies to parents and to Moms for Liberty,"
Descovich said.
She also argued that a “threat tag” approach, which she said rested on Patriot Act authorities aimed at parents at school board meetings, sent a warning nationwide.
"The effect of Merrick Garland and the DOJ and the FBI under the Biden administration issuing a threat tag, that was founded on the basis of using the Patriot Act against parents in this country that were showing up at school board meetings. It sent a chill through the country,"
The Working Group findings do not turn her characterization into a full primary-document reprint. They do establish the 25 Guardian assessments, the Garland memo’s origin story under White House pressure, the internal “ridiculous” critique, and the tip that bundled gun ownership with Moms for Liberty membership.
Descovich framed the report as a starting point, not a finish line. She said a government that ran this effort against ordinary parents needs consequences that outlast a single press release.
"There needs to be accountability to a government that was out of control. The first step of accountability was losing their power and their election, and we need to continue that through the midterms, because we cannot give power back to the people that weaponized the government against citizens, against ordinary parents. Beyond that, I really hope the current administration will take further steps to hold the individuals accountable that were driving these attacks against its citizens."
Joint Justice Department and Education Department materials have since moved to reaffirm that parents are not terrorists and that they retain the right to direct their children’s education. Descovich called the need for that official clarification a measure of how far the earlier approach had drifted from basic norms.
The documented core remains straightforward. A 2021 attorney general memorandum, produced under White House pressure, preceded 25 FBI Guardian assessments of parents. At least one assessment grew from a tip that highlighted a mother’s firearm and her link to Moms for Liberty. Internal voices flagged First Amendment and political-appearance problems at the time. Years later, the department’s Weaponization Working Group put those facts on the record, and the co-founder of the named group called the result what it was: overdue recognition that parents were not the threat federal power made them out to be.
When federal law enforcement opens files on moms for speaking at school boards, the failure is not parental involvement, it is a government that forgot whom it works for.
