Attorney General Merrick Garland is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. He previously testified before the House Judiciary Committee last week.

Just as with his House testimony, one of the major targets of the questioning of Garland is his decision to order a federal effort looking into “threats” against school boards. He did that in response to a letter from the National School Boards Association to Joe Biden that painted parental actions as being potential domestic terrorism. But it was a letter distinctly lacking in showing any real issues with violent incidents or things that would merit that description.

Many critics believe this is an effort to demonize parents and chill their rights to object to things like Critical Race Theory and other politicizing of the school curriculum.

In response to questioning in the House, Garland referenced the letter for his decision to act but he didn’t list any other data in response to questioning from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Today in the Senate, he failed again to actually list anything when pushed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) other than saying there were “news reports” yet he couldn’t produce those reports or cite to specific data. He was asked since the NSBA had retracted and apologized for their letter, was he going to retract his memo? Garland obfuscated.

In an exchange with @SenMikeLee, AG Garland is asked to cite specific threats of violence that led to him announce a probe into parents protesting at school board meetings. Garland can't cite a single one beyond "news reports." pic.twitter.com/kERupDGM1F

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 27, 2021

He said that this is what they do every day to see if they are needed. But the local law enforcement didn’t ask him for help or indicate in any way that they needed his intervention. He responded to a letter from a political organization that has since been pulled back. So why is he doing anything at this point?

It’s important to understand how wrong what Garland is saying is. He’s saying he opened up a whole effort, immediately, based on one letter, and he can’t even present the real data to show any uptick in threats or why they couldn’t be addressed by the local government. That’s incredibly wrong and not the way that government task forces or actions are supposed to be done.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) put out a video in which he homed in on this question as well as some other areas that Garland needs to answer. Likely we’ll hear more on this later today after the testimony.

But he raises some great questions here.

Five things Merrick Garland needs to answer now! pic.twitter.com/knRyhyd2HV

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 27, 2021

It’s hard to get the government to do anything much less get the immediate action that this NSBA letter got from Garland. “Why did the DOJ cater to the NSBA?” Cruz asks. There also need to be answers about the collusion between the White House and the NSBA on this letter, to begin with, since emails show they were in discussion about this for weeks and that the White House asked them to list incidents of violence.

Cruz asked about the Loudoun sexual assault cover-up. The NSBA listed the arrest of the father of the girl who was raped as an incident in their “domestic terrorism” letter. The father was upset at a board meeting because the superintendent had just lied and said there was no such incident. There was a scuffle where he pulled back against a police officer when he was grabbed and then was brought to the ground by them during a board meeting but he didn’t attack anyone, do anything that was “domestic terrorism” or qualified for federal attention. By citing the NSBA letter, Garland is implicitly signing aboard this nonsense. “Did he know about the cover-up?” Cruz asks.

Cruz also pointed toward a potential conflict of interest that Garland may have because of the company run by his son-in-law which Cruz said was connected to the teaching of Critical Race Theory. “Do ethics matter?” Cruz asks.

Cruz demanded the answers for two other very important questions not related to schools.

First, is the DOJ investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci for lying to Congress about gain-of-function research on the Wuhan virus? Fauci told Congress that the administration had not funded gain-of-function research, when in fact, as we have previously reported, that was untrue. “That was a lie,” Cruz said. So where’s the investigation? Why hasn’t he resigned? Why hasn’t he been fired? What’s he still doing there?

Finally, Cruz hits on the horrible results of vaccine mandates, specifically noting the fear in Chicago that they might lose 1/3 of the police force because of vaccination status. Garland needs to answer if the mandates are hurting communities dealing with crime and why the “heroes of our communities, the first responders” are the “victims” of the mandates being promoted by Biden. This is hitting police forces across the country not to mention other areas like our military and transportation, potentially not only hurting local communities but also endangering national security.

As usual, Cruz puts a target on some very important issues. Will we get any straight answers from Garland on any of this?

We’ll be watching today and stay tuned.