Tillis Doesn’t See Danger Of Biden’s Weaponized DOJ

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., tried to compare the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department to the Trump administration’s effort to clean up that abuse during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Tillis opened his commentary by stating he was “going to ascent to the rarified air of the moral high ground for a minute.” Tillis first acknowledged that Democrats refused to speak out against the weaponization of the DOJ under the Biden administration. But he then suggested the Trump administration is now doing the same thing the Biden administration did.

“I was against that and I’m also against some of the decisions of the president,” Tillis said, referring to Democrats’ weaponization and the alleged weaponization by Republicans. “Now, my criticism of the administration with the red jersey (Republicans): January 6. I have searched Heaven and Earth and I haven’t found anything except a passing comment at a C-Span conference, so can you tell me definitively that you think that any Capitol police officer who was harmed on January 6 was a victim of a heinous crime at the hands of the person who did it?”

Blanche affirmed as much and noted individuals involved with violence were prosecuted. Tillis then resumed criticizing the current administration.

“I want leadership that says ‘we’re gonna ratchet things down and not make the heinous mistakes that the Biden administration did’. Let’s be better than them, not better at prosecuting people that maybe we shouldn’t — or take a little bit more time before we indict them — but let’s just be better than them. Let’s set an example and stop this spiraling,” Tillis said.

“This administration has done the same thing to justify some of their behavior … we are at this place today in part because of the actions of the Biden administration and the weaponization that I even saw under Garland who I generally supported. Let’s just be real here people,” he continued.

Tillis then shifted his attention to the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund — which was designed to redress claims of those who believe they were the victim of Biden’s weaponization of justice — and said it should never be paid out.

But Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., explained during that same hearing the distinction that Tillis apparently doesn’t understand.

“When you go after your political opponents, that is weaponization,” Schmitt said. “When you hold people accountable who weaponize the justice system, that’s not the same thing.”

He’s right. Holding those who weaponized the system of justice accountable is not the same as weaponizing it. In fact, as The Federalist Managing Editor Elle Purnell wrote in these pages, “the best way to end the political weaponization of the bureaucracy is to punish the weaponizers.”

Yet critics of Trump (like Tillis) purposely ignore that important distinction, which only downplays the severity of the weaponization seen in Biden’s DOJ.

The Biden DOJ appointed Jack Smith as special counsel, and he indicted Trump in June of 2023 on 40 felony counts for allegedly mishandling classified documents. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case one year later, ruling Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. Smith also secured an indictment against Trump for his speech questioning the outcome of the 2020 election. The Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the case vis-a-vis their immunity ruling, and Smith later moved to dismiss the charges after Trump won the election.

Meanwhile, Douglass Mackey was prosecuted and sentenced to seven months in jail on charges of “conspiracy to interfere with voters’ potential right to vote” for having posted a meme during the 2016 election encouraging people to vote for Hillary Clinton via text. His conviction was later unanimously tossed.

In 2022, more than two dozen Christian pro-lifers were persecuted by the Biden DOJ under the FACE Act for peacefully protesting against abortion. Some of those arrested included people who simply prayed and sang hymns outside abortion facilities, as The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported. The most notable victim was Mark Houck, who protected his son from abortion activists at a demonstration across from Planned Parenthood in 2021. The administration used FBI agents armed with battering rams and ballistic shields to arrest Houck at his home in front of his family. His family recounted that agents “had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house.” Houck was later cleared by a federal grand jury.

Nor was the Biden DOJ’s targeting focused on high-profile cases.

A 2024 Inspector General report, along with transcripts of one FBI official’s 2023 interview with the House Judiciary Committee, “shows that the FBI’s strategy for retaliating against whistleblowers involved suspending their security clearances without explanation or warning,” Boyd wrote in these pages. That same inspector general report also found that “the FBI’s partisan leadership is currently engaging in a ‘purge’ of agents who hold conservative political beliefs.”

As Boyd also reported in 2024, the DOJ pursued a four-count indictment against a Texas doctor who blew the whistle on Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston for performing gender mutilation surgeries. Meanwhile concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings were labeled possible “domestic terrorists.”

The Biden administration also spied on Republican members of Congress by targeting lawmakers’ personal cell phones for “tolling data” as part of the FBI’s Arctic Frost investigation, which was used to justify the lawfare against Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election.

Holding those engaged in that conduct accountable is not the same as weaponizing the Department of Justice, and the sooner “Republicans” like Tillis understand that, the sooner trust can be restored in these systems.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2