Conservative Activists Face 11 Years In Prison For Praying

In the first week of October 2022, 100 days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Joe Biden held a highly publicized meeting with his so-called “reproductive rights task force” in the state dining room of the White House. At the meeting, Biden announced a plan to subvert the Supreme Court’s ruling, to the extent that he could. He instructed Congress to pass legislation that would prevent any state from banning abortion. He also announced millions of dollars in federal funds to promote abortion, and threatened legal consequences for any university that tried to punish a student for killing her child. 

What Joe Biden didn’t announce is that, as he spoke, his enforcers in the DOJ were planning a “shock and awe” style raid designed to intimidate and punish pro-life activists. Just hours after the meeting of Joe Biden’s “task force,” at 7:00 a.m. on October 5, a team of heavily armed FBI agents arrived at the Centerville, Tennessee, home of Paul Vaughn. One of the agents apparently delighted in telling one of Vaughn’s children, who was waiting for him to drive them to school, that their father was going to jail. And indeed, agents arrested Paul Vaughn in front of his children and hauled him away as they refused to answer any of his wife’s questions. Here’s some of the footage she recorded from that morning:

Video of the FBI’s arrest of Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee. DOJ charged him with “conspiracy against rights secured by the FACE Act, and committing FACE Act violations” for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic. Paul tells me the footage was taken by his wife. pic.twitter.com/KSDvLRSrlF

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 7, 2022

What was Paul Vaughn’s crime? As I mentioned on the show yesterday, a full year and a half before that FBI raid — in March of 2021 — Paul Vaughn participated in a protest at an abortion facility in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, along with several other pro-life activists. These activists sang and prayed in a hallway outside of the facility. Local police arrived, told these activists to leave, and they refused. So a handful of them were arrested for misdemeanor trespassing.

To add some dark irony to the situation, one of the protesters was booked for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” because the protester brought a child to the demonstration. So, taking your kid to pray and sing at an abortion facility is “contributing to their delinquency.” But killing your kid at the abortion facility is great, apparently. And this is in Tennessee, a state that’s controlled for the most part by the Republican Party.

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Interestingly enough, Paul Vaughn himself wasn’t arrested by local police that day, because he was outside, functioning mainly as a liaison between the police and the demonstrators. They didn’t see any reason to arrest him because he wasn’t even trespassing in the hallway. And really, the whole situation was obviously overblown anyway. At a press conference following the arrests, a reporter asked the police spokesman why they were bothering to clog the court system with trivial trespassing cases like this. It wasn’t exactly the crime of the century, and everyone knew it. In case you need a reminder, here’s what it looked like:

BREAKING: Six pro-life activists were just found guilty in federal court after being prosecuted by Biden’s DOJ under the FACE Act for protesting outside a Nashville abortion clinic.

Here’s a snippet of the protest, which occurred on March 5, 2021.

For the crime of praying and… pic.twitter.com/UPzZvtZebM

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 30, 2024

Watching these people praying and singing, the Biden administration saw an opportunity. They decided to make an example out of Paul Vaughn and everyone else who protested at that abortion facility. In all, the DOJ arrested 11 people for participating in the demonstration, including an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor named Eva Edl. They charged these protesters with violations of the federal “Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,” (or FACE Act), which carries penalties of up to a decade in prison.

There was never any way to justify this charging decision, even using the standards of Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland. Prior to the arrests, Garland stated under oath in the Senate, “We prosecute without respect to ideology, but we do focus on the most violent acts, the most dangerous actors and the cases most likely to lead to danger to most Americans.”

No part of that statement was true, as it turns out. Not only does the DOJ prosecute explicitly on the basis of ideology, but they’re also focusing on the least violent and dangerous acts imaginable — namely sitting and praying in front of abortion facilities. And their strategy appears to be working. 

Yesterday, a federal jury convicted six pro-life activists, including Paul Vaughn, of FACE Act violations, as well as engaging in a “conspiracy against rights”. The jury apparently agreed with the DOJ that Paul Vaughn and another demonstrator, simply by negotiating with police, were really engaging in a “delaying tactic.” And therefore, they’re just as guilty as the demonstrators in the hallway. And now all of these defendants are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and up to a decade in prison.

Unfortunately, in the federal system, cameras aren’t allowed in the courtroom. So we can’t show you video footage of what the prosecutors said. But thanks to reporter Leif Le Mahieu from The Daily Wire, we do know that in closing arguments the prosecutor stated these demonstrators were not in fact peaceful protesters simply by virtue of the fact that they committed a crime. As The Daily Wire observed: “During her final statements to the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Klopf likened the actions of the six pro-lifers to that of a group of people attempting to convince someone not to vote, and blocking the entrance of a polling location. She said that, ‘something is not peaceful if laws are broken.’”

That’s actually what Joe Biden’s assistant U.S. attorney said. Her argument is that all crimes are inherently violent simply by virtue of the fact that they involve breaking the law.

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Whatever we think of that reasoning, it’s obviously insanely inconsistent with Joe Biden’s own stated goal to release “nonviolent offenders” from jail. That’s why he pardoned all of those marijuana offenders, supposedly. It’s also why the DOJ paid out a massive settlement to those BLM rioters who occupied Lafayette Square near the White House, even though some of them threw frozen water bottles and rocks at police officers. And it’s why the DOJ dropped more than a third of the criminal cases against BLM rioters who sieged a courthouse in Portland. We’re told all of these offenses were nonviolent and therefore no charges should be brought. Apparently it’s only when you pray silently outside an abortion facility that you go to prison. That’s the only nonviolent offense that cannot stand.

So there’s no denying this argument from Joe Biden’s DOJ is hypocritical. But that’s not the point, really. Everyone knows that. The point is that under the U.S. Constitution, the government isn’t allowed to be hypocritical when it comes to enforcing the law. We have something called the Equal Protection Clause. We have Due Process. And if that means anything, it’s that the government can’t selectively enforce laws, depending on which ideology it wants to punish. That’s the problem here. 

Yes, the people who gathered inside that hallway did violate the letter of the FACE Act. They apparently convinced someone not to kill their baby that day, and go home instead, and as the law is written, that’s a crime. These peaceful activists did violate federal law.

That law, however, happens to be atrocious and unconstitutional for many reasons, one of which is that the law is being unevenly enforced to an extreme degree. The White House isn’t even attempting to hide this. Joe Biden announced his pardon of nonviolent marijuana users literally a day after the FBI raised Paul Vaughn’s home, just to underscore the message he’s sending. They are absolving one class of nonviolent criminals while hunting down another class of nonviolent criminals like they’re an Al Qaeda cell.

But they’re not terrorists, or even close to it. These pro-lifers — a collection of elderly retirees and parents with young children — were engaged in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. Sending these demonstrators to prison for 11 years for that civil disobedience — which harmed no one and caused no damage to property — is both cruel and clearly unjust.

Maybe it could be explained on some theoretical level if the administration had established a precedent of bringing the hammer down on everyone who violates the law for…