The Department of Justice fired at least four prosecutors who took part in weaponizing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to put pro-life Americans in prison.
Terminations of the prosecutors took place on Monday, and were announced in tandem with a nearly 900-page report detailing Biden administration abuses of the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life advocates.
“DOJ has terminated the employment of personnel responsible for weaponizing the FACE Act who still remained at the department,” the Department of Justice said.
Sanjay Patel, a Civil Rights Division prosecutor, was one of the prosecutors fired. The DOJ had placed Patel on administrative leave in March. The House Judiciary Committee had already pinpointed Patel last year as a member of the Biden administration’s weaponization, and the Justice Department report notes that much of the drive toward weaponization came from “career attorneys” like Patel.
According to the report, Patel relied on information from pro-abortion groups like the National Abortion Federation (NAF) for the hit list of pro-lifers to attack. Patel appears in emails lauding the work of NAF Security Director Michelle Davidson, stating, “She has been an MVP bringing incidents to my attention, often in real-time, which usually result in an investigation/prosecution.”
That lawfare collaboration led to the prosecution of people like Lauren Handy, a member of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, who peacefully protested outside an abortion facility in Washington, D.C. Handy was sentenced to 57 months in prison and three years of supervision for participating in conduct fully protected by the First Amendment.
When Trump entered office again in 2025, he pardoned many of the people unjustly targeted by the Biden administration’s weaponization. The firings continue a pattern of the Trump Justice Department cleaning house of far-left prosecutors who, under the leadership of Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland, attempted to destroy the lives of Americans who disagreed with the Biden administration. Garland’s Justice Department did so in part by selectively enforcing the FACE Act against Christians who opposed abortion.
The “weaponization working group” report pulls back the curtain on the lopsided enforcement against Christians, revealing how the Biden administration largely refused to enforce the FACE Act when doing so meant protecting the rights of pro-life Christians who were under attack.
Those attacks included firebombings, vandalism, and other assaults against places like pregnancy centers that refuse to conduct or encourage abortion. In addition to leaving political enemies vulnerable through negligence, the Biden DOJ also used militarized scare tactics like early morning raids of pro-life advocates’ homes and pointing loaded guns at them in front of their children, as was the case with Mark Houck.
It remains unclear who the rest of the fired prosecutors are.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
