DOJ ‘Hate’ Unit Tracked Moms For Liberty Alongside KKK
A Department of Justice unit dedicated to “preventing and responding to” “hate crimes” tracked the conservative education policy group Moms for Liberty in the same manner it tracked the Ku Klux Klan, according to internal emails obtained by The Daily Wire.
Moms For Liberty was tracked by the DOJ’s Community Relations Service (CRS) alongside symbols such as the noose, the Confederate flag, and the swastika. The only other groups whose movements were similarly tracked, the emails show, were the Ku Klux Klan, a second KKK-style group, and the Oath Keepers.
The DOJ concealed the records from the public by ignoring a Freedom of Information Act request, but released them pursuant to a lawsuit filed by America First Legal on behalf of The Daily Wire. They show the Community Relations Service, which says its role is “preventing and responding to community tensions and hate crimes, bias, bullying, and discrimination,” tracked targets like Moms for Liberty through Google and LexisNexis alerts.
The DOJ did not return a request for comment on why it was tracking Moms for Liberty. It appears to have used its tracking of Moms for Liberty to identify school boards considering enacting conservative-leaning education policy. It then pressured school boards to defer to the DOJ to resolve the differences of opinion between duly-elected conservative officials and leftist activists, instead of enacting platforms they won elections on.
The Daily Wire obtained emails from DOJ-CRS “Conciliation Specialist” Hannah Levine. The emails suggest that she did little other than track supposed “hate” by setting up Google Alerts and LexisNexis alerts for keywords. For example, she scoured the news for articles that said “washington, dc n-word” and “washington, dc confederate flag.”