WASHINGTON, DC — Today, America First Legal (AFL) filed a request for investigation with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) regarding Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona’s appointment of Viola Garcia, President of the National School Boards Association, to the National Assessment Governing Board.
Working for weeks with White House and other Biden political officials to counter and suppress parents protesting Administration priorities including racial and gender indoctrination and irrational school mask mandates, Garcia authored the notorious Sept. 29th letter requesting the Department of Justice use the PATRIOT Act and other authorities against American parents protesting racial and gender indoctrination and/or irrational mask mandates in our public schools. To support her request she cited an article concluding “all anti-CRT events involving these actors have remained peaceful.” She also cited the arrest of a Virginia father at a school board meeting as evidence of a malicious threat, without disclosing the dad was trying to talk about the rape of his ninth grade daughter in a girl’s bathroom by a boy who gained access to that intimate facility by claiming he was “gender fluid” and wearing a skirt.
Two days after the NSBA letter went public—on October 1—Garcia was appointed by the Secretary of Education to the National Assessment Governing Board.
Three days later -on October 4-Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum deploying the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other federal law enforcement resources against parents protesting CRT, dangerous and extreme gender policies, and scientifically unsound mask mandates for public school children. Garcia’s letter was the Biden Administration’s pretext for this unprecedented abuse of federal power.
America First Legal has asked the ED OIG to investigate whether Garcia’s appointment was based on improper considerations or as a reward for her apparent collusion with the Biden Administration against the interests of American parents and their children.
Statement From America First Legal Vice-President Gene Hamilton:
“The Biden Administration issued a memorandum to chill the exercise of fundamental rights by American citizens justifiably concerned with the direction of their children’s education. That memorandum—issued by the Attorney General of the United States—was supposedly premised upon a letter sent by Viola Garcia and the National School Boards Association to President Biden. After sending the letter, the Biden Administration appointed Ms. Garcia to a heavily influential federal advisory board. Just like the timing surrounding the submission of the letter and the issuance of the Attorney General’s memorandum, the timing of Ms. Garcia’s appointment appears to be more than coincidental. We are asking the Department of Education’s Inspector General to do the right thing, to conduct a serious inquiry, and report on any inappropriate considerations used when appointing Ms. Garcia,” Gene Hamilton said.
Read AFL’s request here.
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