On Monday, Mark Houck received the best news of his life after a jury acquitted him of charges brought by the DOJ under the FACE Act. The pro-life activist was facing up to 11 years in prison for shoving a Planned Parenthood “escort” who had verbally accosted his son.
Dozens of others are still facing charges under the clearly unconstitutional FACE Act, which infringes on the right to free speech in order to provide special protections to abortion mills. In Houck’s case, despite the state charges against him being dropped and an argument for self-defense existing, the DOJ continued to pursue the prosecution as part of the Biden administration’s crackdown on pro-life activists following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Now, we are getting a look at exactly what transpired regarding the incident with Houck, and the DOJ has some explaining to do.
The surveillance video, which was shown on Sean Hannity’s Monday evening broadcast, revealed several important things. For instance, we see that Houck was not at the entrance of the abortion facility and appears to be more than 100 feet away, which is one of the stipulations of the FACE Act. Further, it is clear that the “escort” walked all the way down the sidewalk by himself in order to threaten Houck’s son. The pro-abortion activist was not escorting anyone.
Given that, there appears to have been no justification for the DOJ to pursue charges under the FACE Act against Houck. Remember, the question here wasn’t whether Houck shoved the man. That’s a matter that was dealt with at the local level as it should have been, and no one goes to prison for 11 years for pushing someone. The question was whether Houck violated the FACE Act with his actions, providing the hook for the DOJ to bring federal charges.
I don’t believe he did, and at best, the situation was ambiguous enough that the DOJ never should have gotten involved. They did so for purely political reasons, attempting to discourage pro-life activists via the full weight and power of the US government from non-violently protesting and praying outside abortion facilities. It shows just how compromised the DOJ is.
What makes this situation all the worse, though, is that the punishment was the prosecution. Houck had to spend thousands of dollars and put his life on the line to defend himself from a malicious hit that was only carried out to push the far-left’s radical pro-abortion agenda. Lawfare has become standard fare for the DOJ, and it’s scary stuff.
