White House communicated with DHS over NSBA letter, documents show
- July 21, 2023
EXCLUSIVE — A senior official in the Biden White House asked the Department of Homeland Security to share any department programs that could contribute to the administration’s response to a letter from the National School Boards Association about threats against school board members, according to internal emails.
The emails, which show communications between National Security Council Director for Counterterrorism Michael Massetti and DHS officials, were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the government watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust. The documents are the latest indication of the lengths the Biden administration went to in order to respond to the NSBA’s September 2021 letter.
Michael Chamberlain, the director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Washington Examiner in a statement that the latest production of documents was further evidence that the Biden administration had mobilized counterterrorism officials to respond to the letter.
“Officials at the highest levels of the administration have denied for years that they ever referred to or considered the protests of parents at school board meetings to be domestic terrorism,” Chamberlain said. “Now we have confirmation that the letter from the National School Boards Association spurred the administration to put its top counterterrorism officials at the National Security Council and Department of Homeland Security on the case. If the gaslighting and obfuscation weren’t bad enough, the use of counterterrorism tools in this context certainly raises the specter of the government trampling on the First Amendment rights of parents who were just trying to get the best for their kids.”