Written Testimony of Paul Vaughn, Client and Pro-Life Father Before the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government of the Committee on the Judiciary, Dec 18, 2024

On October 5^th, 2022, at approximately 7:15 in the morning, my house was assaulted, my wife and children were terrorized, and I was kidnapped at gun point by four armed men.¹ I had just sent three of my children to the car so I could take them to school. As I gathered my final items needed for an important business meeting later that day, the house began to shake from a loud banging on the front of the house. I heard men shouting on my porch, “Open up, FBI”. The banging continued. As I looked out of a side window to check on the location of my children, I saw two unmarked SUVs with lights flashing, but I did not see my children. The banging continued and I heard more shouting, “Open up, FBI!”. I opened the curtains on the front door to find three men with guns trained on the door. I asked who they were looking for and they replied, “We’re here for you”. They did not identify me by name or provide any identification for themselves.

As I believed there was an imminent threat to the safety of my wife and 7 children who were home that morning, I determined to surrender myself to them with nothing more than hope that they were legitimate law enforcement.

I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch staring down the barrels of both a pistol and an automatic weapon of war pointed at my head, with another agent carrying his long gun at a low ready position behind the first two. As I did, I asked what authority they were operating under and if they had identification. I later learned that at the same time, three of my children ages 12, 14, and 18 where being detained in the side yard on the edge of the woods by a 4th man.

These men were in full tactical gear, armed with weapons of war, but not in uniform. I was taken without the presentation of a warrant or identification when requested. In fact, one man showed a desire to escalate the lethal risk my family and I faced that morning by responding to my request for identification and authority with taunts. As he puffed out his chest, he poked his finger on the Velcro patch labeled “FBI” and shouted, “This is the only identification you get”.

Make no mistake, this was an armed conflict, and I was unarmed. Lethal force was abused to abridge my God given and constitutionally secured rights. At the moment of being placed in handcuffs, I became a slave to ideological tyrants, either the ones holding the weapons or the ones they obeyed. Either way, I had no rights and was completely under the control of four armed men, who could have just as easily have been Al Queda as respectable US law enforcement. As it turns out they were neither. The constitution, as it relates to me and my family, was torn to shreds and left under the boots of these men as they escorted me to their car in handcuffs.

Agent Sterling Wall (Figure 1) appeared to be the lead of the four agents on my arrest. He signed the warrant confirming my arrest² and was the one who drove me to the holding cells beneath the federal courthouse in downtown Nashville. Agent 3 accompanied us. Although I had no eyeglasses to read the warrant, Agent Wall did pull it up on his laptop once I was in the back seat of his car and in custody. None of the men offered any information to my wife although she asked repeatedly what this was about. The fact is from roughly 7:15 that morning until I was arraigned around 2 pm and then dumped on the streets of downtown Nashville, over 60 miles from my home, without a wallet, phone, id, or any personal effects. No one who knew me knew where I was or why I was kidnapped off my porch. During this time, I had been shackled, fingerprinted, had my DNA stolen under duress, and was thrown into a holding cell with felons. While I endured this litany of injustice and humiliation, my children had it far worse. The household was in emotional shambles as my 12-year-old was curled up in a ball sobbing in tears, my 18-year-old was fighting back stress and adrenal sickness, my wife attempted to offer support without any knowledge of who had taken me and why. We determined later the agents did not go through my local sheriff; they didn’t notify any Tennessee Law enforcement. They simply showed up with lethal force, guns pointed at my head and kidnapped me off my front porch in front of my family.

As we pulled out of my driveway Agent Wall called Mark Shafer to inform him, I was in custody. I witnessed the call and saw the name on the caller ID. This left the obvious question in my mind who is Mark Shafer? Was he the one that ordered the Gestapo hit on my house? Is he the one who chose not to call me to request I self-surrender, like the co-defendants in other jurisdictions were able to do? I have no criminal record. I have lived in the same house for 17 years. I own a local business serving the community I live in. Why was a lethal force raid needed to secure the warrant for my arrest? Who gave that order?

The Event in Question

The reason for all this drama is a prolife event that occurred 18 months prior to my arrest. On March 5th of 2021 a handful of pro-life Christians gathered at the Carafem Abortion Clinic in Mount Juliet Tennessee to attempt to save unborn children who were scheduled to die that morning.

Ultimately there were 8 adults arrested that day for passively and peacefully refusing to leave the premises when requested by the police. They did not do this in rebellion against the police, but to identify with the unborn who are unable to leave the womb where they are scheduled to be terminated.

I did nothing different that day, that I have not done since the FACE Act was passed in 1994. I was not arrested the day of the event. I broke no laws, federal or local. In fact, we were expecting our 11^th child, and I promised my wife I would stay out of any trouble. So, I was very careful to stay within the legal lines. I had sidewalk counselors on site that day I was responsible for as well as my own children. When one particular police officer seemed agitated, I want to talk with him to make sure he understood the purpose of us being there that day and insure him the people onsite were not violent and had great respect for the police in contradiction to many other protest groups in our nation in recent years.

I ended up talking with the police chief and the lead negotiating team as a desire to make sure everyone was safe and to help them both understand what was going on and to bring a peaceful resolution to the event. I helped the police and the pro-lifers that day as a messenger between the two groups. The police spokesperson complimented the peaceful nature of the group in the media that afternoon.³ The lead negotiator for the Mount Juliet Police Department who I interacted with that day testified at our federal trial on our behalf.

There is evidence from the trial that Mark Shafer showed up at the Carafem clinic at 10:51 AM the day of the event and was identified as being with “the FACE unit FBI” to conduct interviews and began his investigation⁴. He submitted a subpoena request to the Middle TN District court that was signed by Magistrate Judge Frensley.⁵ By all reasonable evidence available he seems to be the lead investigator in this case and perhaps oversaw executing the warrants for arrest. If so, why did he choose to bring lethal force to my front door when a phone

call accomplishes the same goal? Did he give the order, or did it come from higher in the chain of command? He was promoted 30 days after my arrest to The Office of Congressional Affairs in Washington D.C. Was this new position as Supervisory Special Agent a direct result of his execution of my arrest?⁶ Was his subsequent retirement during the heat of the election an attempt to avoid the justice President Trump promised?⁷ These are some of the questions Congress should be asking in their oversite capacity. This is just one way the FACE Act is being used as a weapon against the free speech and religious freedoms of conservative Christian Americans.

The Reproductive Task Force

Between the event in March of 2021 and the raid on my house in October of 2022, there was a central event that happened. The Supreme Court overturned the previous rulings related to abortion. Instead of the Department of Justice enforcing the laws of the land, they chose to oppose the Court. In June of 2022, Merrick Garland stated, “The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Court’s decision.”⁸ As a result of that disagreement I believe the DOJ formed their own personal office of warfare, called “ The Reproductive Health Task Force” in July of 2022.⁹ There have been multiple presentation to this Committee regarding the unequal application of the FACE Act by this task force and their enforcement through the FBI since that time. Our case is yet another abusive case against pro-lifers, while many more attacks against prolife pregnancy centers go

uninvestigated.¹⁰ I will limit myself to pointing out a few ideological statements of the members and contributors of that task force that seem to show they were operating beyond the limits of their office and were potentially using their office to advance their own personal ideology.

Sanjay Patel

First, the primary legal theory used in these FACE cases to persecute and lockup Prolife Christians, was first published by Sanjay Patel, a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section.¹¹ He put forth the idea that an old KKK Law could be used in conjunction with the FACE Act to take what the US Congress determined should be a misdemeanor with a maximum of 6 months in prison and turn it into a Felony with a maximum of a 10 year Prison sentence. The following statement from his article was originally posted in the DOJ Journal of Federal Law and Practice in March of 2022.¹² To make the prejudice clear, there is only an “advantage” when trying to charge someone if you are no longer seeking justice, but a specific outcome that suits your ideology. Emphasis added below.

“Therefore, an agreement by two or more persons to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate anyone who is seeking, obtaining, or providing reproductive health services is a cognizable violation of section 241. There are three advantages to charging a section 241 conspiracy when the evidence supports it. First, unlike a section 371 conspiracy, a section 241 conspiracy conviction is always a felony, even when the underlying substantive violation would be a misdemeanor. Second, section 241 violations are punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment; or up to life or the death penalty, if certain aggravators apply. And third, under section 241, the government is not required to prove an overt act or substantial step in furtherance of the agreement.”

As bad a law as the FACE Act is, it would seem the section 241 conspiracy should be re-visited by Congress as well. Apparently, you don’t have to commit an “overt act” or “do anything to further the conspiracy”, you simply have to be ideologically aligned with those who do. This sounds much more like Russia or Germany than the freedom loving country America is supposed to be.

Kristen Clarke

Pointing out the inconsistencies of a person like Kristen Clarke is like pointing out a grizzly bear to someone who is in the tree above it. They are obvious, and the potential for harm is self-evident if you are a Prolife Christian. Ms. Clarke has never pretended to be even handed on the topic of abortion or for conservatives in general. She has labeled pro-life resource centers as fake clinics, called a prolife legal firm a hate group, and attacked prolife legislation.¹³

Kristen Clarke is someone who has a violent past which she attempted to concealed during her confirmation process.¹⁴ The idea that her name is on the indictments against a group of peaceful people who have repeatedly volunteered thousands of hours standing outside America’s abortion clinics to stop violence is one of the most egregious aspects of this trial.¹⁵

There seems to be a discernable prejudice in Ms. Clarke positions, which seem to have motived the attacks against me and other prolife Christians. If that is true, the FACE Act was the vehicle for those apparent prejudices to be applied. If it is not true, then the FACE Act is still being unjustly applied to one group and not another for some other unexplainable reason.

Kamala Harris

If The Reproductive Rights Task Force was going to be equal to both sides of the reproductive health debate, we might expect there to be equal representation on the task force itself. But sadly, there is not one pro-life person who was tasked with the job. There is no representation of the Crisis Pregnancy Centers or someone who speaks on behalf of unborn children. Vice President Harris, who oversees the Reproductive Rights Task Force, is one of the most pro-abortion politicians in American politics and even if there were some pro-life members on the Committee, she would greatly tilt the scale in the pro-abortion favor.^{16 17}

It is important to note, that while Vice President Harris was meeting with the Reproductive Rights Task Force on October 4^th, 2022, talking about “these attacks on women”.¹⁸ They were not referencing physical attacks, but they were referencing laws that were being passed and the overturn of Roe v. Wade. But on the very same day the VP was having this discussion, the physical violent attack on my house was being planned for the following morning. We are often wrongly accused of violence, but the FBI at the behest of the task force used physical violence against me, my wife, and my children as already noted above. I heard this very subcommittee members talk about denouncing violence in all forms in Part 1 of this hearing. I want to challenge those members to denounce the violence that happened to me and my children as well. We have a remedy at law when violence is perpetrated by civilians against other civilians, but we have little recourse when violence is committed against civilians by the government they pay to serve and protect them.

It is also important to note that while there is ample federal guidance on dealing with children in a situation where an arrest is anticipated, the task force had no concern for my children and failed to follow the guidance so readily available to them.¹⁹

The phrase we have heard often through all of this, is “The process is the punishment”. We would like to continue to believe in the good faith of our government and think the best of all involved. But when something so egregious happens to you and to those you love it is very difficult. You like to think that perhaps it was just ignorance, or they didn’t realize the impact this mistake was going to have on your family. But then you find a quote like this from when Kamala Harris was a presidential candidate, and you realize the FACE Act in the hands of evil people is a weapon of destruction that must be neutralized.

“I learned, I think I was, I don’t know, twenty-two when I started that work, I learned that with the swipe of my pen I could charge someone with the lowest level offense. And because of the swipe of my pen, that person could be arrested, they could sit in jail for at least forty-eight hours, they could lose time from work and their family, maybe lose their job, they’d have to come out of their own pocket to help hire a lawyer, they’d lose standing in your community, all because of the swipe of my pen. Weeks later I could dismiss the charges, but their life would forever be changed. So I learned at a very young age the power…”

The Trial – The Process is the Punishment

Given all that is documented above it is unfathomable that a sitting federal judge would allow this case to be brought against anyone on either side of the abortion issue. But again, if the judge is an ideological ally with those bringing the case, is there really hope for justice? The fact that the judge allowed the trial to proceed when the DOJ advertised, they were going to reapply a law meant for murderous attacks on African Americans in the 1800’s to peaceful pro-lifers says volumes about our courts.

By applying the conspiracy law to the FACE Act my individual rights were abridged. Every statement by everyone in the supposed conspiracy applied to me regardless of my knowledge about the statements or if I was even present when they were made. The purpose was to take people who agree ideologically and deny them the right to due process based on their beliefs rather than their actions. The punishment has already been meted out by the process and there can be no restitution that will ever make amends for the injustice this administration has inflicted upon its people.

It has been over 2 years of federal parole monitoring either presentence or parole, 20 months of having a potential decade in prison hanging over our head, stressful weeks in the actual trial, enduring lies and half-truths for the sake of winning a case and not for seeking justice, pre-sentencing monitoring, sentencing 6 months after the guilty verdict, government agents inspecting our home, calling my home making sure I’m obeying their rules, giving up our rights as a US citizen, 6 months of house arrest. All of this while trying to maintain a business and some sort of normal life for my children who have been terrorized by their own government. All of this – process is the punishment, and I was one that did not get jail time. There are those who are in jail and are still awaiting an appeals court to review this new and novel application of the combination of the FACE Act and the conspiracy statute. Where is this land of the free, I was told of in my civics classes?

I don’t come here today demanding justice or vengeance for the injustice that has been done. I trust that God will handle that better than any of us in this room. But I do come here to declare that we have a national character crisis. As a nation we must come together.

Human Life equals Human Rights

This simple monicker applies to multifaceted parts of our national life and character and very specifically to our case that brings us before this body today.

Our case is about both the simple small innocent humans in the womb and well-developed humans who are targets of the actual civil rights division of our government. As a nation, the way we treat the small helpless unborn humans is how we are going to treat the mature grown-up humans who are our political opposition. This battle over human life has been going on for a long time.²¹ I would ask this body to please review and repeal the FACE Act as bad legislation that serves no fundamental purpose in our nation post Roe v. Wade. But more importantly, I would ask each of us, in this committee meeting, and across our land to review our own hearts as it relates to the weak and helpless humans among us. The path forward is to first think of them as humans, and secondly to treat them the way we want to be treated during our lifetime. It is a pretty basic concept; we used to call it the golden rule. Perhaps the path forward for our nation is as simple as that: treat others the way you want to be treated.