Feb 5
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And prosecutors get caught in the crossfire
Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse:
DOJ released an 882-page report Tuesday about the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The Act does just what it sounds like it would do: Makes it possible for individuals who provide medical care or want to receive it to enter clinics that provide reproductive health care without being subjected to violence, threats, intimidation, or physical obstruction. The law allows federal prosecutors to criminally charge people who violate it and gives victims the right to bring civil lawsuits against aggressors. The report concludes that the Biden administration “weaponized” DOJ against people protesting outside abortion clinics, that it criminalized their conservative beliefs. But it doesn’t hold up very well, for reasons we’ll discuss below. It’s politics in the guise of prosecution, an effort to justify Trump’s pardons of 24 abortion opponents who harassed patients and attacked clinics and curry favor with parts of his base.
The report claims the people who were convicted by juries of criminal offenses were “targeted” for their religious views. DOJ put it like this: “Today, the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group published a report detailing the Biden Administration’s weaponization of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Based on a review of over 700,000 internal records, the report not only details specific ways the Biden Justice Department weaponized federal law, but also outlines the corrective action taken by the current Justice Department to make right the wrongs of the prior administration.” Like the Trump Justice Department that produced it, the report isn’t concerned with protecting people from the violence connected with abortion in America. The attacks on clinics and their personnel that were reduced in the decade after the FACE Act was passed have been on the rise again since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs in June of 2022. That same year, DOJ charged 26 people, more than it had charged in the three preceding years combined, with FACE Act violations. That reflects crimes committed, not some sort of bias—you can’t manufacture cases and then obtain convictions, and the Biden DOJ did obtain convictions, in virtually all of the cases.
By January of 2023, the FBI was investigating clinic arsons across the country, including in Memphis, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Seattle, Portland, Costa Mesa, Longmont, and Buffalo. No small problem. This is how the Trump Justice Department reacted: “This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in announcing the report. “No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.” Irony and hypocrisy are dead, but I digress.
DOJ makes this bold claim: “President Trump promised to end the weaponization of the federal government. To many Americans, prosecutions under the FACE Act have been the prototypical example of this weaponization.” You all can tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m not sure “many Americans” are familiar with the FACE Act, let alone view the enforcement of a law that lets people obtain medical care without facing violence, threats, or intimidation when they’re trying to enter the building as “the prototypical example” of DOJ being weaponized.
I’m familiar with the elements of the FACE Act. We got up to speed on it fast in Alabama in 1998, after an anti-abortion activist set off a bomb at a Birmingham clinic, killing a police officer and seriously injuring a nurse. The law doesn’t target people for their religious views—in fact, it protects access to places of religious worship just like it does clinics. It ensures people can access those places, free of physical intimidation or harm, and prohibits damaging them. You can protest as much as you want outside of an abortion clinic or a church, consistent with local ordinances, so long as you don’t use force or threat of force or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate or interfere with (or attempt to do those things to) a person because they obtained or provided reproductive health services, or to intimidate people from obtaining or providing reproductive health services. That’s the complicated statutory language, morphed into English.
[...] There is one obvious point that the new DOJ report misses: Prosecutors don’t convict defendants, juries do. In the cases the Trump DOJ objects to, juries convicted the defendants of FACE Act violations—and as this administration knows all too well, juries can refuse to convict, and grand juries can even refuse to indict, when a prosecution is deficient. Defendants have the opportunity to argue that a prosecution runs contrary to the First Amendment, both before a trial judge and on appeal. These defendants were convicted nonetheless. These cases aren’t about discriminating against Christians. To the extent the Biden DOJ “weaponized” the Department, it did so against criminals. But the report makes some very serious claims about misconduct at DOJ.
For instance, it says that the Biden administration (you may recall Biden did not direct criminal investigations and prosecutions at DOJ, that’s a unique feature of the Trump administration) “closely collaborated with pro-abortion groups to track pro-life activists’ First Amendment activity” and using those relationships, “compiled evidence and dossiers that ultimately gave rise to search warrants and charges.” If it sounds sinister, it’s only because the report makes it out to be, without actually explaining why DOJ might talk to people who are victims and work with victims of criminal acts. That’s pretty much how criminal investigations work. Investigators have to gather evidence, which means talking to people who know what’s going on.
Then there’s the claim that this was about tracking First Amendment activity. The statute doesn’t, and couldn’t, prohibit protestors from expressing their views about abortion. DOJ, or at least DOJ pre-Trump, didn’t prosecute people for doing that; the guidance in the Justice Manual has always been to take care not to interfere with First Amendment-protected activity in these kinds of situations. Had that prohibition been violated, courts would have dismissed the cases pretrial, or, at worst, on appeal. The report fails to acknowledge that the prosecutions it objects to were for real crimes that demonstrably took place.
The Trump Regime’s US Department of (In)Justice released a biased report that claims the Biden Administration “weaponized” the FACE Act against violent anti-abortion extremists.
This is the same regime that used the FACE Act to target Don Lemon and other protesters in Minnesota against a pastor’s alleged ICE ties.
A jury has found Lauren Handy, Will Goodman, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, and Herb Geraghty guilty of conspiracy and FACE Act violations.
The defendants were indicted for their participation in an October 2020 rescue action at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic (WSC), the abortion facility run by Cesare Santangelo. Santangelo was featured in Live Action’s InHuman investigation stating that if a child was born alive at his facility during an abortion, “we would not help it.”
Two defendants – Lauren Handy and Herb Geraghty – cited Live Action’s InHuman video as informing their belief that abortion survivors might be being left to die at WSC, which in turn motivated their decision to participate in the rescue action at Santangelo’s facility.
However, calling the video “gossip from propagandists” (despite the fact that the video showed the abortionist in his own words) presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly would not allow the video itself to be admitted into evidence.
Bias on the part of the prosecution was evidenced by its own word choices. For example, government attorneys referred to a three-day abortion procedure as “care” and as a “treatment” that was “absolutely needed.”
Government attorneys also made sarcastic, condescending remarks to and about the defendants, with one caustically remarking, “That’s convenient,” after a defendant said she could not remember a specific detail.
The judge herself was not above entering into heated exchanges. Sparks flew after defendant Herb Geraghty asserted under cross-examination that federal law prohibits certain types of abortion procedures nationwide:
(Gov. Attorney) Patel: You know that abortions are legal in the District of Columbia? Geraghty: I know that some abortions are, but partial birth abortion and abortion that a fetus survives outside the womb– Patel: Sir– Judge Kollar-Kotelly: Sir, as a practical matter, that’s not correct. There are no statutes in the District of Columbia that say anything about limitations on abortion. Geraghty: There’s federal laws, Your Honor. Judge Kollar-Kotelly: You are going to be the legal expert here? I suggest that you not get into that.
However, partial-birth abortion, or D&X, is indeed outlawed under the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.
During deliberations on Friday, the jury sent three questions to the judge.
First, they asked: What do “oppression” and “intimidation” mean as defined by law?
Second, pertaining to a particular client of the abortion facility who was on the final day of a three-day abortion procedure and was experiencing labor pains when she arrived at WSC on the day of the rescue: What were the exact medical symptoms of the woman who collapsed in the hallway?
And lastly: What is the nature of ‘treatment’ for each of the different 3 days of ‘procedures’ at the Washington Surgi-Center?
There was a discussion about whether to define “oppression” and “intimidation” narrowly, as in the FACE Act, or more broadly, as it frequently is under conspiracy charges. Ultimately, the judge settled on a broad definition. With regard to the second and third questions, the judge gave the jury no answers; the second on the grounds that private medical conditions are not relevant, and the third on the grounds that there was no evidence given about specific abortion procedures during the trial.
More can be read about the trial at the links below:
Witness testimony in federal trial of pro-life rescuers begins, with court’s bias on display
Prosecution calls more witnesses in day two of pro-life rescuers’ federal trial
Arresting officers take stand at FACE Act trial in DC as judge warns religious pro-lifers on-site
FACE Act trial judge calls video of abortionist that motivated defendants ‘gossip from propagandists’
Defense and prosecution rest in FACE Act trial, as judge appears ignorant of federal abortion law
Defense in FACE Act trial closing arguments: Criteria not met for guilty verdict
Claiming that anti-choice groups regularly “harassed, threatened, and menaced” patients outside an abortion clinic in Queens, the New York attorney general announced a federal lawsuit against protestors targeting Choices Women’s Medical Center on Tue
YES
WE NEED THIS IN LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY!!!!
Former CNN anchor said he was working as a journalist when he was arrested at protest during church service
Lucy Campbell at The Guardian:
Former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon pleaded not guilty on Friday to federal civil rights charges connected to his coverage of a protest at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official is a pastor. Four others also pleaded not guilty in the case. Lemon did not comment to reporters as he entered the courthouse accompanied by his attorney Joe Thompson, but he later issued a statement stating his refusal to be intimidated by the Trump administration and vowing to “fight these baseless charges”.
“For more than 30 years, I have been a journalist – and the power and protection of the first amendment has been the underpinning of my work,” Lemon said, referring to the US constitutional right to a free press. “The events before my arrest, and what’s happened since, show that people are finally realizing what this administration is all about. “For them, the process is the punishment. Like all of you here in Minnesota, I will not be intimidated, I will not back down, and I will fight these baseless charges.” Roughly two dozen protesters stood outside the building, chanting “Pam Bondi has got to go” and “Protect the press”. They held signs with slogans including “Lemon was just doing his job” and “ICE out”. The veteran journalist’s attorney Abbe David Lowell told the judge that he will raise first amendment issues in the case. Lemon, 59, has said he was at the Southern Baptist church in St Paul to chronicle the protest but was not a participant. Lowell also asked for Lemon’s phone to be returned after it was taken from him during his arrest in Los Angeles, saying its seizure was a possible “over-execution”. Prosecutors said the phone was in Department of Homeland Security custody, and that the search warrant for it was under seal. The phone could not be returned until the search process was completed, they said.
The civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong was among the other defendants to plead not guilty. The prominent local activist was the subject of a doctored photo posted on official White House social media that falsely showed her crying during her arrest. The picture is part of a deluge of AI-altered imagery that has circulated since the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers in Minneapolis amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Two more defendants accused in the church protest are scheduled for arraignment next week, including another independent journalist, Georgia Fort. Nine people have been charged in the case.
[...] All nine are charged under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits interference or intimidation of “any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship”. Penalties can range up to a year in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon pled not guilty on federal civil rights charges connected to his coverage of the Cities Church protest in St. Paul, MN.
A bill to repeal a 30-year-old federal law that safeguards reproductive health clinics passed out of committee on Tuesday and now heads to t
Alanna Vagianos at HuffPost:
The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill on Tuesday that would repeal a 30-year-old federal law created to safeguard abortion clinics — even as violence against providers and clinics has skyrocketed since the Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as the FACE Act, was enacted in 1994 by President Bill Clinton in response to escalating violence against abortion clinics. The law made it a federal crime to use force or the threat of force to injure, intimidate or block any person trying to provide or access reproductive health care services. While the law has primarily been used to protect abortion clinics, it also protects fertility clinics, anti-abortion pregnancy centers, churches and other places of religious worship from similar violence. Anti-abortion violence dropped by 30% when the FACE Act was first signed into law. The law is arguably now more important than ever, since federal abortion protections fell in 2022 and violence against providers and clinics have skyrocketed. The year the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade, there was a 538% increase in people obstructing clinic entrances, a 913% increase in stalking of clinic staff and a 133% increase in bomb threats, according to a National Abortion Federation report.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025 earlier this year, claiming that President Joe Biden’s administration weaponized the law to prosecute anti-abortion activists. The repeal is part of a yearslong push by the GOP to stoke a false narrative that Democrats are waging a war against the anti-abortion religious right. Republican support for the bill comes less than a month after a California fertility clinic was bombed and one person died. After a heated debate on Tuesday, the repeal bill passed in a 13-10 vote along party lines. It now heads to the House for consideration.
“NAF has been tracking anti-abortion violence since 1977, and we know this for certain: when the FACE Act is being enforced, it is an effective and important tool to keep abortion providers and their patients safe,” Julie Gonen, chief legal officer at the National Abortion Federation (NAF), said in a Tuesday statement. “It is unconscionable to see anti-abortion legislators trying to repeal a law that has been keeping people safe for decades.” During Tuesday’s debate, Roy claimed that he had little issue with the actual law and instead worried about overcriminalization and the Biden administration’s “one-sided enforcement of the law.” He noted that he’s received pushback from within the Trump administration over his repeal bill because he said the administration is looking to use the FACE Act to protect churches. “The previous administration weaponized the FACE Act to prosecute nonviolent pro-life Americans with the harshest sentences,” Roy said, routinely referring to abortion clinics and pro-choice advocates as “anti-life.”
Republicans argued that the law has been disproportionately applied against anti-abortion advocates who protest at abortion clinics. Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said there has “most certainly been egregious abuse” from the Biden administration’s “selective enforcement” of the law. [...] Days into his presidency, Donald Trump announced he would limit enforcement of the FACE Act. He dismissed a handful of current ongoing FACE investigations and instructed prosecutors to apply the law only in “extraordinary circumstances” such as instances of death, extreme bodily harm or significant property damage. Trump also pardoned 23 people for FACE convictions that ranged from harassing pregnant patients to breaking into clinics and stealing fetal tissue. Several of those pardoned, some of whom were serving prison time, have already said they plan to return to targeting and invading abortion clinics.
House Republicans set to take the shameful step to repeal the FACE Act and remove protections for abortion clinics.
A St. Paul church disruption exposed the moral bankruptcy of ICE, conservative Christianity, and right-wing media
Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist:
For months now, ICE has been going to churches to terrorize immigrants—or anyone they suspect deserves to be deported. They’ve arrested people on church property. A lawsuit against the agency said ICE goons “seized a man in front of a church near Los Angeles and brandished a rifle at a pastor in the process; detained a grandfather in the same city who was dropping his granddaughter off at a church school; arrested a man outside a church in Oregon; and carried out arrests on two Catholic parish properties in Montclair and Highland, California.” That’s why many pastors in immigrant-heavy areas have told worshipers to stay home rather than attend worship services. The Republican Party had made it virtually impossible for those church members to feel safe in their houses of worship. That’s also why a group of about three dozen activists in Minneapolis—where an ICE agent murdered an innocent woman, Renee Good, earlier this month—interrupted services at Southern Baptist-affiliated Cities Church in St. Paul on Sunday morning. They stepped into the building to yell “ICE out!” and “Justice for Renee Good!”
That’s not just a random church; that would have been pointless. This was a church that employs David Easterwood, the acting director of a local ICE field office, as a pastor. It was a peaceful protest that was organized by the Racial Justice Network, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and Black Lives Matter Twin Cities. And what occurred inside the church is nothing compared to the actual harm that ICE agents have inflicted upon the city’s residents. But the same Department of Justice that refused to investigate ICE agent Jonathan Ross, despite mountains of evidence of his crimes, is now pretending the church protest was the gravest possible sin.
[...] (The right-wing mob is furious that former CNN anchor Don Lemon was aware of the protest in advance and documented it online. Naturally, they also want his head on a platter.) The protesters didn’t desecrate a house of worship by demanding justice and peace for the people in their community. Easterwood desecrated it when he decided threatening immigrants with deportation was an extension of his faith. The people in that church were far better served listening to the protesters than anything they would have heard from the pulpit. As one Reddit user noted, another word for what the protesters did is “prophecy” because they spoke “the truth of God… to the people of God who need a corrective word.” There are going to be critics who say this was not strategic. That it plays into the right-wing persecution complex. That it fuels a narrative in conservative media that protesters are against Christianity. But if you know anything about right-wing media, you know that those narratives were written long before anything happened. They will use anything to justify the story they want to push no matter how insignificant it is.
The Christians in that church dealt with a minor inconvenience. It’s nothing compared to the horror that’s been inflicted on the entire lives of people in that community, in part because a pastor at that church is personally leading a group of law-breaking, armed, government-backed mercenaries. [...] If protests are forbidden in houses of worship, then surely ICE raids on church property are illegal, too, but that obvious hypocrisy wasn’t addressed by the Trump administration. Neither was the fact that this ICE leader who has a side gig as a Christian pastor has no business telling others how to lead a moral life.
[...] The protest inside the church ended after about 20 minutes, but the Trump administration, in an effort to distract from their own incompetence and cruelty, is now using the incident as proof that even more Trump-aligned agents need to pour into the city. But make no mistake: This wasn’t some attack on Christianity. This wasn’t an attack by the godless. This was a protest against cruelty and plenty of Christians participated and endorsed it. One local Lutheran minister wrote online, “You cannot worship a Savior on Sunday who was crucified by a violent State, while the rest of the week acting as a violent agent of an unjust state force who is killing and targeting Americans according to hate.” That’s why it’s deeply ironic that the president of the SBC’s North American Mission Board promised to “provide protection” for their churches if Minnesota leaders “won’t contain lawlessness.” The lawlessness is coming from inside the SBC church, sanctioned by people like Easterbrook, not from the Christians and allies trying to help the “least of these.” That doesn’t mean the protesters won’t be charged with something, though. The Department of Justice says the protesters violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) which protects access to places of religious worship. But that law bans anyone from obstructing, desecrating, or preventing access to houses of worship. The protesters didn’t do any of those things. They came inside and chanted their slogans… then left. (Keep in mind that right-wing protesters have done exactly that to LGBTQ-affirming churches without any complaints from the Justice Department.)
The anti-ICE protest at SBC-affiliated Cities Church in St. Paul, MN is morally justified due to the fact that David Easterwood, who is one of the church’s pastors, is an acting ICE field director. It is also justified due to ICE terrorizing congregants at places of worship across America.