Mark Houck, a prominent Catholic leader and abortion protester, avoided prison last week when a federal jury acquitted him of violating the federal FACE Act. He faced up to 11 years in a federal prison after the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him for pushing a Planned Parenthood volunteer outside a clinic in October 2021.
Federal prosecutors alleged Houck violated the FACE Act, which protects abortion clinic staff and clients from intimidation and violence, but the federal jury deliberated for only an hour before finding him not guilty.
In a Tuesday interview on American Family Radio, Houck was asked by co-host Fred Jackson if he was contemplating legal action against the Department of Justice.
“Well, 100% we're taking legal action,” Houck replied. “We're pursuing that.”
Houck stopped short of describing a civil lawsuit but he did acknowledge his arrest and prosecution have not not gone ignored by Republicans. The pro-life activist said he is meeting February 22 with Republican lawmakers in Congress. Those lawmakers, he said, sit on a special House committee investigating the “weaponization” of the federal government against its own citizens.
Houck also revealed he is attending tonight’s State of the Union address. He is going at the invitation of Rep. Scotty Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who leads the Freedom Caucus.
“Mark Houck and his family,” Rep. Perry told The Daily Signal, “are innocent victims of the radical Left’s reprehensible abuse of power, which systematically seeks to destroy the lives of hard-working Americans whose only ‘crimes’ are using their God-given constitutional rights to protect their families, faith, and way of life.”
“So we’re beginning to make those relationships and contacts,” Houck advised, “and God willing we’ll be able to testify before Congress, before the subcommittee, in March.”
In the radio interview, Houck also disclosed the FBI agents who arrested him put him in belly shackles and feet shackles at the federal building in Pittsburgh. He remained chained to a table, he said, for six hours on the day of his arrest.
Attorneys at the Thomas More Society, the law firm that represented Houck, had previously told federal prosecutors their client would voluntarily show up for his arraignment if a grand jury indicted him. Instead, the FBI informed Thomas More of his arrest that morning.
