The Five: Parents push back on AG Garland after letter targeting them at school board meetings
Jesse Watters and the panel sound off on 'The Five'
In the wake of parental pushback over a Justice Department memo authored by Attorney General Merrick Garland targeting their behavior at school board meetings, the panel on "The Five" discussed the ensuing backlash.
Garland's memo came shortly after a letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to President Biden that said some rhetorical clashes between school boards and parents may amount to "domestic terrorism." Garland's memo told the FBI to take the lead on a task force to address threats against school officials, including creating a centralized way to report such threats.
On "The Five", host Jesse Watters said he read through Garland's entire missive and characterized it as something an offended "snowflake" would issue after being challenged:
"I read the same letter and I could only find one actual threat: Someone mailed a letter to a school board and said ‘we are going to get you, you’re going to pay a price’ -- That [alleged criminal offense] is for the local [law enforcement] jurisdiction. The FBI doesn’t need a task force to handle that," he said.
"The other things they consider threats: chanting, holding up a sign, refusing to wear a mask, objecting to critical race theory, exceeding their allotted speaking time at the meeting."
Watters noted how a few parents have received summonses for being too loud, or refusal to leave the premises, which has happened in one recent case in Sterling, Va.
"None of that is considered something you would prosecute under the Patriot Act," he said, referring to the sweeping legislation signed by President Bush in the wake of 9/11.
"This is a snowflake letter. I read the whole thing. I get more threats after each show up than they have gotten all year," Watters added.
"If you think they can only compile 24 incidents of threatening behavior, a country of 300 million people, for an entire year and they can only come up with one mean letter, that means this thing doesn’t even add up."
Further, host Sandra Smith compared the views of parents pushing back on Garland with attacks several media figures have made against said parents:
In one NBC News appearance, former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence C. Frank Figliuzzi criticized parents, saying that when civil-servant school board members are "get[ting] threatened by violent extremists, it is a high-threat environment."
MSNBC guest-host Jason Johnson, a professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, wondered aloud in another clip whether the uproars at board meetings are simply about "being upset about mask mandates" or whether there are "White nationalist [and] anarchist" undertones being used to "wage chaos".
Host Greg Gutfeld later responded that the uproar is a "combination of Democrats, media and activist class in an attempt to control the population."
Fox News' Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
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