Biden’s Justice Department was overly aggressive in prosecuting a Bucks County antiabortion activist, Trump administration says
In a nearly-900 page report, officials said the prosecution of Bucks County resident Mark Houck — which ended with an acquittal — was an example of how the Biden administration "weaponized" the law.
The Justice Department on Tuesday said federal prosecutors under former President Joe Biden “weaponized” the law to target people with antiabortion views, and said one of the key examples was a case in which the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia charged a Bucks County activist with seeking to intimidate workers and patients outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. That case ended in an acquittal.
In a nearly 900 page report released Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s administration said the Justice Department under Biden and then-Attorney General Merrick Garland was biased in how it sought to enforce the FACE Act, a federal law that makes it a crime to injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone at abortion clinics, pregnancy centers, or houses of worship.
The report said that the Justice Department in previous years “ignored and downplayed” complaints unless they came from abortion advocates, and that it collaborated with abortion advocacy groups, sought tougher sentences against people who opposed abortion, and “engaged in inappropriate conduct and comments” while prosecuting abortion opponents.
The report is the first to be issued by the Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group,” an initiative created by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to respond to Trump’s belief that past administrations had unfairly — if not illegally — manipulated the law to target political opponents.
Bondi’s successor, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, said in a statement accompanying Tuesday’s report that “no department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs.”
“The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system,” Blanche said.
Kristen Clarke, a former top official in the department’s Civil Rights Division, which handled FACE Act cases, said to CNN in a statement: “We enforced the law even-handedly and put public safety at the center of this work.”
To bolster some of the report’s more pointed assertions, it highlighted the case against Mark Houck, a prominent Catholic antiabortion activist from Kintnersville, in Upper Bucks County.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2022 charged Houck with two FACE Act violations for shoving a 72-year-old patient escort outside the Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Center City.
Prosecutors said he did so to intimidate the man, Bruce Love, for his work, and they took Houck to trial before a jury, where a conviction could have led to a decade-long prison sentence.
But jurors quickly acquitted Houck, who did not deny shoving Love, but said he was not the aggressor and was not seeking to cause political intimidation. Instead, he said, the scuffle occurred because Love had uttered insulting and profane remarks about his 12-year-old son, who had accompanied Houck to the clinic that day.
Houck’s case became a cause celebre on right-wing news sites, and his supporters had long called the case an “abusive prosecution” by an overzealous Justice Department.
His attorneys echoed that sentiment after he was acquitted, saying the case was “nothing but an intimidation tactic by the Biden Justice Department.”
The Trump administration did not use those exact words in its report Tuesday — but did seem to adopt the position that Houck was treated improperly.
Before Houck’s arrest, the report said, one of the prosecutors assigned to the investigation — Sanjay Patel, who worked for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in Washington — spent “several months persuading his supervisors to allow him to file charges.”
Then, after Houck was indicted, the report said, officials declined to allow him to turn himself in, and instead sent 16 armed FBI agents to his house to arrest him and place him in handcuffs.
The report also included emails among prosecutors discussing the case. In one of them, a prosecutor asked whether it would be the first FACE Act prosecution following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. In another, Patel said the “unspoken reason” Houck was not allowed to surrender to authorities was because “the FBI really likes to make arrests.”
Patel was reportedly fired this week, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia declined to comment Tuesday on the report, or say if any of its prosecutors involved in the matter might face disciplinary action. The FBI’s Philadelphia field office also declined to comment.
Houck — who after his acquittal went on to mount an unsuccessful congressional campaign — said he did not want to comment and revisit a painful chapter for his family.
Earlier this year, the report said, the Justice Department agreed to settle a lawsuit he had filed claiming he was maliciously prosecuted.
One of Houck’s attorneys, Edward D. Greim, said in an interview that the government paid Houck and his family $1.1 million to settle, and added: “We’re gratified that the Department of Justice conducted this investigation and looks to be committed to fixing their abuse of civil rights.”
