Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Wednesday called on the Justice Department to investigate a former school board president who allegedly kept a dossier of personal information about parents who were against critical race theory and mask mandates.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Mr. Brnovich that the recent “disturbing trend” with school boards “interfering” with parents’ constitutional rights had reached Arizona.
“A dossier containing information about those who want to attend their children’s education and peacefully request their government should concern all Americans with a clear conscience,” he wrote.
Jann-Michael Greenburg, who was voted out as president of the Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board on Monday, reportedly kept the dossier on a Google Drive.
Google Drive, which contained information about targeted parent children, had files labeled “SUSD Wackos” and “Anti Mask Lunatics” along with others that cataloged parents’ online Internet activities in an opposition research format, according to several Arizona news reports.
The drive’s settings were made public so anyone with access to the link could see it and its contents, including parents’ financial documents, social security numbers, and divorce papers.
Mr. Brnovich called on the Justice Department to investigate whether Mr. Greenburg violated the Constitution by depriving a person of a right or privilege according to the color of the law, and whether he misused the school’s resources to prepare the dossier in violation of the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act.
“There is no place in America under basic concepts of freedom where parents must be monitored, threatened and intimidated in order to assert their constitutional rights and raise concerns about their children’s education,” wrote Mr. Brnovich.
Clashes between parents and school boards have become a political inferno across the country, with the White House and the Department of Justice being under fire from conservatives for collaborating with the National School Board Association to label angry parents as “domestic terrorists.”
Mr. Brnovich’s call for action came the day after Republican lawmakers said a whistleblower sent them an internal FBI email showing the anti-terrorism unit monitoring parental threats against school board members.
According to the email, the assistant directors of the FBI’s anti-terrorism and criminal divisions asked agents to track down the threats in response to Mr. Garland’s note on October 4, which instructed the agency and other federal agencies to address a “disturbing increase” in school board threats. members and other school officials.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican in the Judiciary Committee, said in a letter this week to Mr. Garland that the email “questions the accuracy” of his testimony that the department “did not use anti-terrorism statutes and resources to target concerned people. parents at school board meetings. ”
An FBI spokesman told The Washington Times that the agency “has never been in the process of investigating parents who are speaking out or speaking at school board meetings, and we will not start now.
The FBI’s focus, the spokesman said, is on both “violence and threats of violence that potentially violate federal law.”
“The criminal investigation department and the anti-terrorism department share the responsibility for violent threats,” the spokesman said. “But before one of the departments can open an investigation, there must be information indicating potential use of force or violence and a potential violation of federal law.”
