Trump administration plans to attack Biden DOJ as ‘anti-Christian’ in new report

The Trump administration is finalizing a report that calls Biden’s Justice Department anti-Christian because of its enforcement of laws protecting abortion clinics and enforcement of Covid regulations, among other issues, according to details of the report viewed by NBC News.

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The report comes from a Justice Department-led task force that aims to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” formed after an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in February 2025. A final version is expected to be released in the coming weeks, a Justice Department spokesperson said.

The report carries no legal weight, but represents an opportunity for the Trump administration to politically attack the Biden administration.

Trump has long claimed that Joe Biden was anti-Christian, although the former president is a devout Catholic who has rejected those statements. At the 2021 National Prayer Breakfast, a Christian-leaning event that brings together members of Congress, the White House and other leaders, Biden condemned the “political extremism” that inspired the riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Trump’s order argued that “the Biden Justice Department sought to stifle faith in the public square,” and the task force’s draft report uses similar language, asserting that the Biden administration “has engaged in anti-Christian bias.”

An analysis by the Interfaith Alliance after Trump’s executive order found no evidence of widespread anti-Christian bias in the United States.

“In reality, it will weaponize a narrow understanding of religious freedom to legitimize discrimination against marginalized groups,” the alliance’s analysis says.

Part of the report is expected to criticize the Biden Justice Department’s use of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which was passed in 1994 following attacks on abortion clinics and providers.

Some anti-abortion protesters who were prosecuted under the law when Biden was in office were pardoned by Trump when he took office.

Kristen Clarke, former assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department under Biden, said in a statement to NBC News that the Justice Department “enforces the law impartially and places public safety at the center” of its work.

“For decades, the Civil Rights Division has brought together law enforcement officials, crisis pregnancy center representatives and reproductive health care personnel to combat the actual violence, threats of violence and obstruction that too many people face in our country when it comes to reproductive health care,” Clarke said.

Biden’s office did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The language in the draft report is unusual for the Justice Department, which typically speaks through legal documents, and reviews of internal policies and procedures normally emanate from the inspector general’s office. But it’s not just a product of the DOJ; the task force also included members of the Trump cabinet.

It is also expected to address topics that have previously attracted attention, including a retracted 2023 memo from an FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, that discussed “radical-traditionalist” Catholics. Former FBI Director Chris Wray and former Attorney General Merrick Garland both disavowed the memo after it was leaked by a then-FBI special agent who grew close to then-FBI Director Kash Patel and has since fallen out with him.

Patel was interviewed for the upcoming report and noted that the Richmond memo had been “widely discussed and rightly so,” according to details seen by NBC News.

Patel said they took a “deep dive” into creating the memo and said the FBI had “abandoned all relationships with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League,” which he said “contributed to this sad violation of our constitutional rights.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a legal advocacy organization founded in the 1970s that seeks to combat systemic discrimination through litigation. The Anti-Defamation League is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending anti-Semitism and extremism in all its forms.

Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s appointee to head the Civil Rights Division, used the FACE Act in a historically unprecedented way, charging dozens of anti-ICE protesters who showed up at a Minnesota church, as well as former CNN anchor Don Lemon. His office has tried unsuccessfully to keep many defendants incarcerated until trial, an unusual requirement in cases where defendants are charged with nonviolent crimes. They also falsely accused and arrested a woman who did not take part in the protest.

Jonathan Darnel, an anti-abortion activist who was sentenced to 34 months in prison in a FACE Act case and later pardoned by Trump, told NBC News on Thursday that he wanted to see the final report before commenting on it. But Darnel also criticized the Trump administration’s approach to the FACE v. Lemon Act.

“I’m absolutely not a fan of overzealous prosecutions, no matter how they happen,” Darnel told NBC News after Lemon’s arrest. “The punishment has to fit the crime, and FACE – especially when you couple FACE with conspiracy charges – could send someone to prison for years, and that seems like way too harsh a punishment for something that just ruins people’s mornings.”

Darnel said he fears that if Trump administration officials “start using this law as a convenient tool to go after people they don’t like, then it will never be repealed, and it will be a lot harder for people to do the kinds of things that I did, and what other rescuers are trying to do, just peacefully interfere with abortion clinics.” »

“We are prepared to face some legal sanctions, that is only part of the problem,” he said, while adding that the sanctions provided for by the FACE law were “far too heavy”.

A separate, forthcoming report focused on the FACE Act is the product of the Justice Department’s “arms task force,” according to details of that report viewed by NBC News. According to a DOJ memo released last year, the panel was supposed to review, among other issues, prosecutions brought under the FACE Act. The report is expected to target individual attorneys for their handling of cases related to the FACE Act, according to details viewed by NBC News. MS NOW was the first to report the details of this report.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said this week in response to a question from NBC News that the work of the “arms task force” — previously led by Jan. 6 defendant attorney Ed Martin — would soon be made public.