Tucker Carlson Shreds FBI for Raid on Anti-Abortion Activist: 'Pro-Lifers ... Are Now Terrorists'
Paul Vaughn doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who gets raided by the FBI.
He’s not some despondent, loner-ish chemical engineering grad cooking up ricin in the basement or a mid-level drug runner. He’s a 55-year-old former pastor with a wife and 11 children who now runs a small business in Tennessee.
But, as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson noted in his opening monologue on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Monday, he’s exactly the kind of person President Joe Biden’s FBI thinks is worth coming down on — hard.
“Last Wednesday morning, at about 7:15, a bucolic scene at the Vaughn household. Several of Paul Vaughn’s children are standing in the front yard about to head to school,” Carlson said.
“Suddenly, out of nowhere, their world falls down around them: A team of FBI agents armed with automatic rifles swoops in in their SUVs and begins pounding on the front door of the family home.”
Vaughn was led away by FBI agents — all because he protested outside a Tennessee abortion clinic in 2021 in a way the Department of Justice claims constituted obstruction of the entrance and intimidation of clinic employees.
According to CBN News, Vaughn was part of a group of 11 pro-life activists who were arrested for the March 2021 protest. They’re charged with violations of the FACE Act (or Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act; yet more proof there isn’t a bureaucrat alive who can resist a corny acronym), which could land them behind bars for 11 years.
Vaughn’s wife recorded the aftermath of the raid:
🚨 One of the pro-life leaders targeted by Biden’s DOJ sent me footage of the early morning FBI raid on his family home. Paul Vaughn was placed in handcuffs by armed FBI agents in front of his children just before school drop-off. Watch as his wife pleads for answers mid-arrest: https://t.co/lUP6tJOSzW pic.twitter.com/XeYComC6mZ
— Mia Cathell (@MiaCathell) October 7, 2022
“Body armor, little watch caps, automatic weapons held at the ready, taking off with her husband,” Carlson said.
“‘Why are you taking him? Who are you?’ she asks, but of course they completely ignore her. ‘No, we’re not going to answer. We tried’ – when they didn’t. They don’t have to answer because when your husband is a domestic terrorist, the government doesn’t owe you an answer to the most basic questions.”
His crime?
“Paul Vaughn opposes abortion and not just in a quiet, personal way. That would be bad enough, but Paul Vaughn is outspoken about his views on abortion. He still believes, being 55, this is a free country with a Bill of Rights that allows you the freedom to say what you want and even have protests on behalf of your ideas,” Carlson said.
“He believes that was the freedom that built this country. So, a year and a half ago, in March of 2021, Vaughn and 10 volunteers from a Christian pro-life group in Tennessee staged a protest at an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet.”
Carlson then played video of the protest, and compared it to the nightly chaos of crime in big cities across the United States. He also compared it to the the Justice Department’s version of events, which, according to quoted material Carlson presented, accused Vaughn and his fellow demonstrators of using “force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate and interfere with employees of the clinic.”
“He didn’t use physical force. He sang hymns, but for doing that, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice now tells us Paul Vaughn deserves to spend 11 years in prison. Eleven years? Vaughn’s, quote, ‘co-conspirators’ from that day in March of 2021, meaning other pro-life activists, are also facing long prison sentences.”
The whole monologue is below:
Other dangerous pro-life “co-conspirators,” Carlson said, included 87-year-old Eva Edl, who survived a communist concentration camp in post-World War II Yugoslavia, 57-year-old pro-life missionary Calvin John Zastrow and his daughter, 24-year-old Eva Darlene Zastrow.
Carlson noted the obvious: This wasn’t based on the danger these individuals posed, but rather whom they likely supported at the voting booth.
“Take a look at the mug shots from the FBI’s investigation into this event in March of 2021. It’s on your screen right now. They’re telling you, the FBI is telling you, bragging about it, that these people are dangerous. And of course, you know what they know — which is, in America 2022, whether you’re dangerous or not, depends almost entirely on who you voted for,” Carlson said.
“Keep in mind that Biden voters, who’ve actually killed people, are facing less jail time than these Christian protesters. Illinois BLM rioter Matthew Rupert received fewer than 11 years for setting fire to a cell phone store in Minneapolis,” he noted.
“Twenty-six-year-old Montez Terriel Lee received fewer than 11 years in prison for setting fire to the Max It Prawn Shop in Minneapolis, a fire that wound up killing a 30-year-old man. He got less time than Paul Vaughn is facing.
“Twenty-year-old Samuel Elliot Frey was sentenced to just over two years in federal prison for setting fire to a health food store, but it was for a good cause. It was for Joe Biden, so not a big deal. All of those crimes and countless others that are happening around the country at a scale we have not seen in our lifetimes, all of those crimes are being treated as less serious offenses than a man who sang hymns in an abortion clinic.”
Furthermore, Carlson noted the timing of the raid — which could best be considered as odd, since just a day before the raid, both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris targeted pro-lifers during remarks at the White House on Tuesday.
“We’re not going to sit by and let Republicans throughout the country enact extreme policies to threaten access to basic health care,” Biden said. “My message to folks across the country who are worried about what we’re seeing is, first, that we have your back.”
“What we believe, and I certainly believe, that a woman should have the freedom to make decisions about her own body and that her government should not be making those decisions for her,” Harris said. “Today’s extremist so-called leaders are attacking the freedom and liberty of millions of women.”
And a day later, 11 hymn-singers were rounded up by the FBI because the Department of Justice claims they “used force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate and interfere with employees of the abortion clinic.”
“So, you think to yourself as you watch something like that, well, of course, there’s an election coming up in just a few weeks and a lot of the Democratic base believes that abortion is the key to freedom and happiness and they’re very upset about the Roe v. Wade decision,” Carlson said. “Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land and so Biden and Harris and the rest of the leaders of that party are pandering to them. It’s OK. We’re on your side.”
And if you’re one of the pro-abortion extremists who attacked churches and crisis pregnancy centers in the wake of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, just know that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has your back, too.
When asked about those attacks — which happened from coast-to-coast after the leak of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health — Pelosi said this: “Well, let me just say this: A woman has a right to choose, to live up to her responsibility. It’s up to her, her doctor, her family, her husband, her significant other and her God. I’m a very Catholic person and I believe in every woman’s right to make her own decisions.”
Nothing about how those responsible for the attack should be hunted down by the FBI and charged with crimes that might land them behind bars for more than a decade — no, nothing like that. When she says “a woman has a right to choose,” that apparently doesn’t just apply to aborting unborn life. She can also choose to attack her political opponents with threats and firebombs.
Just don’t choose to protest outside an abortion clinic, that’s all. Then, it’s a decade behind bars.
“See how this works? So, a group aligned with Joe Biden firebombs a building — firebombs! — and the FBI does nothing,” Carlson said. “Instead, they send agents with automatic rifles to the home of a 55-year-old man with 11 children because he sang hymns in an abortion clinic.”
It’s become a bromide, in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid, for conservatives to say that the FBI is being “weaponized” against them. Given the particulars of the Trump case and the fact that a former president is a difficult figure to relate to, the concept of weaponized federal law enforcement is difficult for the average American to comprehend.
The raid on Paul Vaughn’s house, however, should hammer home the stark realities of what this means.
The people at the top don’t just use electioneering or messaging to get you into line anymore. They use guns, batons and handcuffs, too — and it’s not just for politicians with national reputations.
If your crime is politically convenient, you’ll get off easy. You might not even have to face charges. Sing hymns inside an abortion clinic in a way that can be interpreted as a violation of federal law, however, and the feds show up at your doorstep while you’re taking your children to school. Get convicted and you’re facing a decade or more in the slammer, potentially.
As for the ricin-producing loner chemists we used to think the FBI went after? You almost believe agents would ask whether they were going to mail it to a Republican or a Democrat — and then charge accordingly.
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