The Department of Justice (DOJ) released an 800-page report on April 14, detailing “weaponization” by the Biden administration of a federal law meant to allow access to abortion clinics, pregnancy resource centers, and houses of worship.

The report followed an internal DOJ investigation as part of President Donald Trump’s push to end abuse of Americans by government agencies. It reveals prosecutorial problems, surveillance activities undertaken by pro-abortion groups, failures to comply with federal law, and other alleged abuses.

The DOJ’s report describes prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act as the “prototypical example” of the weaponization of government that the Trump administration seeks to end.

The FACE Act of 1994 is a “viewpoint-neutral law” that prohibits physically obstructing, intimidating, or injuring people who are trying to access abortion clinics or pregnancy resource centers.

Following the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the DOJ formed the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers, referencing the FACE Act.

The task force mostly consisted of members of the Civil Rights Division, but used broad cooperation among multiple sectors of the DOJ, U.S. attorneys, and the Office of the Attorney General. Its activities stand at the center of the alleged abuses in the report.

Here is what to know.

DOJ Treated Pro-Life Groups Differently

According to the report, the task force treated pro-life groups very differently from pro-abortion groups.

“I think the single most important thing for the American people to understand is that the Department of Justice was working very closely with outside organizations to actually target individuals that were just at different views from that outside organization,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said during an interview with NBC.

The report itself emphasizes that it is “unremarkable” for the DOJ to receive tips from, and coordinate with, outside groups in its investigations, but indicated that the scale of coordination with pro-abortion groups indicated bias and prosecutorial overreach.

Under President Joe Biden, the DOJ did not enforce the law evenly, the report states.

“This is about the Department of Justice working hand in hand with outside organizations where their sole mission was to go after individuals who are pro-life, and the Department of Justice took that information, used it as part of their ongoing investigations and prosecutions,” Blanche said.

Crimes Against Pregnancy Centers Less Prosecuted

Although the DOJ under Biden brought dozens of cases against pro-life defendants, it only prosecuted three cases involving crimes against pro-life pregnancy resource centers.

Trump pardoned 23 of those defendants in January 2025.

“Twenty-three people were prosecuted,“ Trump told reporters while signing those pardons, which came a day before the annual March for Life. ”They should not have been prosecuted.

“Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign this.”

Surveillance by Pro-Abortion Groups

The report also highlights how abortion rights groups performed detailed surveillance of their opponents and passed that information to the DOJ.

Ahead of a June 2023 national event by Operation Save America, the National Abortion Federation compiled dossiers of “anti-choice individuals” likely to attend. These included phone numbers, addresses, and birthdays of some of the participants.

It also included photos of them and their minor children, along with names of family members, and a record of their previous activism. The abortion advocate groups flagged events at which they thought that FACE Act violations were likely to occur.

A similar document compiled by Planned Parenthood Federation of America called for “significant judicial consequences [to be] brought against participants” associated with Red Rose Rescue, a pro-life group that has been involved in several instances of blocking access to abortion clinics.

Disparate Cooperation

Pro-abortion groups, the report states, enjoyed easy access to leadership of the task force while pregnancy resource centers did not.

DOJ Civil Rights Division trial attorney Sanjay Patel, task force director, was on “texting terms” with members of the National Abortion Federation, and the task force was in regular communication with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Feminist Majority Foundation, according to the report.

In 2020 and 2022, the National Abortion Federation asked Patel and his supervisor Principal Deputy Chief Paige Fitzgerald to serve as references for grant applications. Patel agreed, the report states.

Meanwhile, the task force did not coordinate meetings with representatives from pregnancy centers until September 2022, after vandalism and firebombings of pregnancy resource centers, it said.

“Internally, [task force] attorneys questioned whether to provide pregnancy resource centers with the same resources as abortion clinics, questioning whether these facilities fall under the FACE Act’s scope,” the report states.

In October 2022, acting upon information provided by the National Abortion Federation, the DOJ charged a group of protesters who had blockaded an abortion clinic about 1 1/2 years earlier.

‘Selective Prosecution’

Pro-life speaker Mark Houck was arrested after an altercation outside an abortion clinic in October 2021. He offered to turn himself in if charges were to be filed; instead, the FBI raided his home just after 7 a.m. almost a year later, detaining him at gunpoint in front of his family.

He was later acquitted, and won a $1.1 million settlement against the DOJ.

In January 2023, a defense attorney contacted a U.S. attorney seeking information on FACE Act violations over the previous decade, with the intent of arguing that the DOJ was engaging in “selective prosecution” against protesters who opposed abortion.

The DOJ refused to provide the information, and after repeated requests, Patel himself responded that his department did not keep the records requested, and suggested that the information could be obtained publicly with a bit of research.

That was not true, the report states.

In 2022, Patel had requested a spreadsheet of the DOJ’s work enforcing the FACE Act, and had already shared a list of prosecutions with the National Abortion Federation. In an email, according to the report, Patel told a colleague that he did not want to turn over the data, saying, “[They] may open gates we will struggle to close later.”

Disparity in Sentencing Requests

The report shows that for pro-life defendants, the DOJ requested sentences that were, on average, more than twice as long as other sentences.

In 2024, the CEO of pregnancy resource center Care Net questioned Patel about the disparity in sentencing, asking for a listing of FACE Act cases and sentences, sorted by pro-life and pro-abortion defendants.

“The bottom line is that there appears to be a double standard in these cases and not equal treatment under the law,” Roland Warren said in an email. “So, I would like to know why this is happening and what will be done to deal with the seemingly biased administration of the law.”

Patel told him that he would need to submit a Freedom of Information Act request.

The report also found evidence of an anti-religious bias. In prosecuting defendants, it said, Biden’s DOJ sought to exclude Christians from the jury pool but struggled to craft questions on religion without being obvious about it.

A DOJ spokesperson confirmed in a social media post on April 13 that Patel, along with three other employees, had been fired.

The Epoch Times attempted to contact Patel for comment but was unable to do so by publication time.