The FBI created a threat tag to target pro-life activists after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to whistleblower testimony obtained by Fox News.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last June, the FBI created a threat tag label “THREATSTOSCOTUS2022,” FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle told the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government during a Feb. 10 interview.
O’Boyle said the tag initially seemed “legitimate” but later “shifted and began focusing in on pro-life adherence,” Fox reported.
“When this threat tag came out, it was like, why are you focusing on pro-life people?” O’Boyle said in the transcript obtained by Fox News. “It’s pro-choice people who are the ones protesting or otherwise threatening violence in front of Supreme Court justices’ houses.”
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The FBI reportedly told agents to look into pregnancy centers and requested that O’Boyle ask his pro-life “confidential human source” questions about potential threats to the court, an assignment he said, “struck me as odd at the time.”
“Like, he’s not the one going and threatening the Supreme Court justices,” O’Boyle said, according to Fox News. In the transcript, O’Boyle said he believes the FBI is politicizing threat tags.
The FBI told Fox it does not “conduct investigations based on a person’s political or social views.”
“And we will vigorously pursue investigations of any threat or use of violence committed by someone who uses extremist views to justify their actions, regardless of motivation or what side of an issue that person is on,” the FBI said in a statement to Fox. “We do not conduct investigations based on a person’s political or social views.”
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Further, the FBI said tags are “merely a statistical tool to track information for review and reporting” that “in no way changes the long-standing requirements for opening an investigation” or “a shift in how the FBI prioritizes threats.”
In late January, a leaked document from the FBI Richmond field office revealed the Bureau had considered infiltrating groups of traditionalist Catholics who prefer Latin mass, claiming they are prone to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.”
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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