Abortion Policy and FACE Act Prosecutions

A draft Justice Department report obtained by MS NOW concludes that the Biden administration politically targeted anti‑abortion activists for their religious beliefs in prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, and is expected to be released as early as next week. The nearly 60‑page draft, prepared under President Trump’s DOJ, seeks to justify his pardons of about two dozen defendants convicted during the Biden years of blockading abortion clinics, threatening violence, and verbally assaulting patients and staff, characterizing them instead as people "with traditional Christian views" and even as "peaceful, pro‑life demonstrators" in some dismissed cases. The report singles out longtime Civil Rights Division lawyer Sanjay Patel—now on administrative leave—for allegedly prioritizing prosecutions of anti‑abortion protesters while neglecting attacks on churches and crisis‑pregnancy centers, a claim two former DOJ colleagues dispute, and it criticizes his push to add charges to increase sentences even as Trump’s DOJ does the same in its FACE case against Don Lemon and Minneapolis church protesters. It also notes that, days after Trump pardoned the protesters, the Office of the Associate Attorney General ordered abortion‑related FACE prosecutions rolled back except in cases involving death, serious bodily harm or major property damage and directed the immediate dismissal of three federal cases in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. The draft comes amid a broader internal purge of career experts and installation of Trump loyalists at DOJ and will be used to underpin the administration’s narrative that Biden "weaponized" civil‑rights law against Christians, even though Trump’s own Department continues to pursue FACE charges against some of his critics and political opponents.