UPDATE: President Trump will pardon pro-lifers prosecuted by the Biden DOJ
(More details...)
Border control, transgender rights and energy are some of the most discussed priorities for the new Donald Trump administration. But one of the most important agenda items, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) says, is both simple and complex. Trump should make sure the scales of justice are rebalanced.
“In the last four years, we have seen the unequal, unfair application of the law like I have never thought possible in this country,” Hawley said on Washington Watch Wednesday. A good place to start, according to the GOP lawmaker, would be pardons for those charged with FACE Act violations during the Biden administration.
Biden’s DOJ averaged almost 15 prosecutions per year under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, legislation signed by Bill Clinton in 1994 with the goal of providing protection for individuals seeking abortions or related services at pro-abortion businesses. That’s a 33% increase from the other two Democratic administrations since the FACE Act took effect.
The law prohibits the use of physical force, threats of physical force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone obtaining abortion services. But the FACE Act is broader than that. It also prohibits intentional damage to churches and other places of worship.
Prosecutions averaged about 10 defendants per year under the Clinton administration, about two per year under the Bush administration and about 10 under Obama. Not all charges are prosecuted.
The Daily Caller reported last July that the Biden administration, in just over three years in office, had levied more than a quarter of all charges to fall under the FACE Act.
Trump this week issued more than 1,500 pardons for defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol demonstration. Hawley has called on Trump for the same sweeping pardons for far fewer defendants, those jailed now under FACE Act violations, many of them pro-life Christians and many of them elderly. (For example, Jean Marshall, 74, has been in prison since Sept. 2023.)
Hawley told show host Tony Perkins that though he’s yet to hear a response from Trump he’s “hopeful that the president will act on this immediately.”
No FACE Act protection for churches
While the Biden administration managed to significantly increase the number of charges under the FACE Act, the charges were all related to what it deemed offenses by pro-life individuals.
The Washington Stand reported last month that 2023 saw 436 attacks on churches but zero prosecutions under the FACE Act. Ninety-two percent of Biden administration cases using the FACE Act targeted pro-life advocates, The Stand reported.
“Since the start of the Biden-Harris administration until May 2024, the DOJ had brought a total of 24 FACE Act prosecutions against 55 defendants, with only two of these cases concerning attacks on pregnancy resource centers. To this day, the FACE Act has never been used in defense of a church since it was passed in 1994,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) noted during a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee in December.
In all, 50 of those 55 defendants were pro-life, and the department obtained 34 convictions, according to data by The Washington Stand from the Biden Justice Department.
Roy this week introduced a bill calling for the repeal of the FACE Act. “Unequal application of the law is not truly law. It is tyranny imposed on those who don’t have power by those who have it,” he told the Judiciary Committee in December.
Hawley supports a FACE Act repeal. “It has been used as a weapon of intimidation against believing Americans, particularly pro-life Christians. It has been used against them. It has been applied unequally, unfairly from Day One and this has just got to stop,” he emphasized.
Shocking disregard for neutrality
The level to which the law has been unequally applied is appalling, said Hawley.
“What is particularly grotesque about all of this is that in this same time period, while the Biden administration was going after and singling out these good Americans, these believing Christians, to try to make examples of them, churches were being literally firebombed. Pregnancy care centers were being attacked.
“Their workers were being harassed. Their places of work were vandalized, burned. And what did the Biden administration do about that? Nothing, not a thing,” Hawley said.
The unequal application of the law is dangerous for Americans, he concluded.
“The whole point of the rule of law is it's blind as to the individual characteristics of a person. The law is not supposed to look on you and say, Oh, you're a Christian? Well, in that case, that means you don't have any First Amendment rights. It’s supposed to say, Here is the rule. It's neutral. We apply it fairly to everybody.”
