The Trump administration released an 800-page report Tuesday exposing how the Biden Justice Department systematically targeted peaceful pro-life Christians while shielding abortion clinics and their allies from scrutiny.
The Weaponization Working Group, which reviewed more than 700,000 internal records, found that Biden DOJ prosecutors pursued far harsher sentences against pro-life defendants than against violent pro-abortion offenders, withheld evidence from defense attorneys, and coordinated directly with abortion advocacy groups while ignoring attacks on pregnancy resource centers.
“This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Tuesday. “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.”
At the center of the report is the Biden-era Reproductive Health Care Providers Task Force, which the report found maintained constant contact with pro-abortion groups while refusing to communicate with pregnancy centers targeted in a wave of arson and vandalism following the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion in 2022. The Task Force had no contact with any pro-life organizations until September 2022, months after the violence began.
The sentencing disparity is stark. Pro-life defendants received an average sentence of 14 months in prison. Pro-abortion defendants: 3 months. The Biden DOJ had pushed for even longer sentences, requesting an average of 26.8 months for pro-life activists compared to 12.3 months for pro-abortion ones.
The report also found that Biden prosecutors withheld evidence defense lawyers requested in multiple cases. In United States v. Gallagher, the Task Force Director told defense counsel he didn’t keep records on prior FACE Act prosecutions, then shared substantially the same information with the National Abortion Federation, a pro-abortion group.
In United States v. Zastrow, assistant U.S. attorneys allegedly tried to screen jurors for conservative or religious beliefs. “They referred to Christian pro-life views as ‘culty’ and lambasted the defendants’ beliefs in the courtroom,” the report states.
The case of Mark Houck drew particular attention. Houck, a Catholic father, was acquitted after the Biden DOJ sent 16 FBI agents to arrest him in front of his children. The department later settled a civil claim over its own misconduct in the case.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who led the Task Force, also served as a reference for the National Abortion Federation’s application for a private grant, a relationship the report says lacked any ethics approval. “We found no record of ethics approval for a DOJ attorney to take an interest in the financial outcome of a party having business before the Biden DOJ,” the report states.
Trump has issued full pardons to the pro-life Christians prosecuted in these cases. His DOJ has also dismissed three Biden-era civil lawsuits against non-violent protesters and issued new guidelines restricting future FACE Act prosecutions to extraordinary circumstances.
