A White House official offered "to explore options" with Department of Homeland Security officials in response to a letter from the National School Boards Association about threats made against members, the Washington Examiner reports.
Partially redacted emails obtained by the group Protect the Public's Trust show National Security Council Director for Counterterrorism Michael Massetti saying he was working "to explore options" in response to a letter from the NSBA concerning threats being made against school board members in September 2021.
"While we recognize that this is in large part a state/local law enforcement issue, I wanted to check and see if you were aware of any on-going DHS programming or outreach vectors that could be used to help with this issue," Massetti wrote.
Other emails show that Lucian Sikorskyj, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention, later told Massetti to contact him directly, and John Picarelli, the director of the Center for Prevention, Programs, and Partnerships, wrote back "three relevant responses," all of which were redacted.
A DHS spokesperson told the Examiner that the agency only provided the National Security Council with resources that are publicly available.
"Upon receiving this outreach from NSC, DHS personnel provided publicly available resources related to addressing threats of violence, as requested," the spokesperson said.
Michael Chamberlain, the director of Protect the Public's Trust, said in a statement to the Examiner that "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."
He claimed that "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."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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