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There are a variety of partisan myths that Republicans embrace with unnerving certainty, as if they just know in their gut that the falsehoods are true, reality notwithstanding. They know, for example, that Donald Trump created the greatest economy ever (he didn’t). They know that the Russia scandal was discredited (it wasn’t). They know that the Obama-era IRS scandalously mistreated conservatives (it didn’t).
And as regular readers are well aware, they know that Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden administration’s Justice Department targeted conservative parents who went to school board meetings, labeling these concerned citizens as “domestic terrorists,” despite the fact that this didn’t actually happen.
Nevertheless, as NBC News reported, the issue is now the subject of a new congressional investigation.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, issued subpoenas Friday to the heads of the Justice Department, FBI and Department of Education seeking documents related to local school board meetings. The subpoenas — which Jordan noted are his first as chairman sent to the Biden administration — require Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to turn over all documents on the topic by March 1.
It's worth noting for context that the far-right Ohioan also claims to have secret, unnamed sources whom he claims told him that FBI agents “opened investigations into parents simply for speaking out on behalf of their children.”
That’s extraordinarily hard to believe, and Jordan has produced no evidence to substantiate the claim, but perhaps some kind of confirmation will someday reach the public. I doubt it, but time will tell.
At this point, we could spend some time dwelling on the fact that Jordan is issuing congressional subpoenas after ignoring the congressional subpoena he received from the Jan. 6 committee, but let’s instead consider why his new investigation is so misguided.
For those who might need a refresher, let’s briefly revisit our earlier coverage and recap how we arrived at this point.
The attorney general was confronted in 2021 with real-world evidence of educators being targeted as part of an intimidation campaign. It led him to write an unremarkable memo explaining the importance of preventing threats and potential violence.
Republican hysteria soon followed. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declared in April 2022, “We’re going to investigate the attorney general. Why did he go after parents and call them ‘terrorists’ simply because they wanted to go to a school board meeting?”
The future House speaker was brazenly lying. Garland did not “go after” law-abiding parents, and he never labeled them “terrorists.” McCarthy just made this up, though he was hardly alone: Jordan also accused Garland of allowing the Justice Department to “spy on” innocent people, though there’s still no publicly available evidence of this ever happening.
In fact, a Trump-appointed federal judge last fall heard a case from Virginia parents who filed suit to block Garland’s alleged policy, and the jurist rejected the underlying claims as absurd.
The irony of the circumstances is that the underlying concerns have far more merit than the Republican complaints. NBC News’ report made clear that the incidents that sparked the Justice Department’s concerns were quite real:
School board meetings across the country have intensified and grown violent in recent years, especially since the Covid pandemic began. In October, a man was recorded on video saying LGBTQ people “deserve death” during a school board meeting in Arkansas where several anti-LGBTQ policies were passed. In January 2022, a Virginia woman was charged after she appeared to threaten school board officials while they met to vote on whether to lift a mask requirement.
A Reuters investigation uncovered a great many other related incidents, each of which should’ve received bipartisan concern. Instead, the new House Republican majority is launching an investigation, not into those who made threats, but into those who took steps to prevent potential violence.
I do wonder about the potential for Jordan’s efforts backfiring. As Americans are reminded of footage of enraged people, engaged in a public intimidation campaign, threatening local officials, how far will the new GOP chairman of the House Judiciary Committee go to condemn law enforcement and defend those who made the threats?
This post is a revised version of our related earlier coverage.
President Joe Biden will deliver his second State of the Union address on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET. Follow msnbc.com/sotu for live updates and analysis from experts and insiders.