GOP Rep. Chip Roy grills AG Garland on alleged Loudoun County sexual assault cover-up

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, pressed Attorney General Merrick Garland on the case of a father who got arrested at a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board meeting after the superintendent flatly denied his claim about his daughter's alleged rape at the hands of a male student dressed in a skirt in a girls' restroom.

Garland recently issued a directive that critics say amounts to an effort to silence conservative parents who appear at school board meetings.

Garland repeatedly denied having any knowledge about the case or about the Loudoun County School Board's alleged cover-up, which has emerged as an issue in Virginia's toss-up gubernatorial election early next month, during a congressional hearing.

LOUDOUN COUNTY PARENTS DEMAND SUPERINTENDENT RESIGN OVER ALLEGED SEXUAL ASSAULTS IN SCHOOLS

"Attorney General, do you believe that a father attending a meeting, exercising his First Amendment rights … that this is domestic terrorism?" Roy asked. "Yes or no?"

"No, I do not think that parents getting angry at school boards for whatever reason constitute domestic terrorism," Garland replied. "It's not even a close question."

Yet many parents suggested that the DOJ has put a target on their backs. The Garland directive instructed the FBI to investigate a "disturbing trend" of "threats of violence" at school board meetings, seemingly acting on the request of the National School Board Association, which had compared some parents to domestic terrorists. The NSBA letter specifically referred to Scott Smith, the father in question.

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Roy mentioned an alleged Oct. 6 sexual assault and asked Garland if he was aware that prosecutors had confirmed that the same male student in that case also allegedly "wore a skirt and went into a girls' bathroom, sodomized and raped a 14-year-old girl in a different Loudoun County high school on May 28?"

"It sounds like a state case, and I am not familiar with it, I'm sorry," the attorney general responded.

The congressman asked whether the FBI or the DOJ is investigating the Loudoun County School Board. 

"I don't believe so," Garland said.

"If not, I'd ask why not," Roy pressed, noting Superintendent Scott Ziegler's June 22 statement that "the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist, after which Smith responded with a derogatory statement, flew into a rage, and was arrested and eventually convicted on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

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Roy argued that "this man, this arrest of a 48-year-old plumber, became the poster boy for the new domestic terrorism the Biden administration — the administration in which you serve — has concocted to destroy anyone who gets in the way."