Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum Oct. 4 directing the FBI to address "threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff" after some groups aired concerns regarding the safety of public schools.
The nature of the FBI's work in that sphere came into question Nov. 16, when Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote a letter to Garland saying House Republicans received information from a whistleblower that the FBI was using a specific "threat tag" to track potential investigations.
An array of false claims about those tags are now circulating on social media.
"BREAKING: House Republicans have obtained whistleblower documents showing that the FBI is using its counterterrorism division to investigate and add 'threat tags' to parents who are protesting school boards," reads text of a Facebook post shared Nov. 16 that was subsequently corrected by the user.
The post generated close to 2,000 likes and more than 600 shares in about a week. Several social media users shared similar versions of this post as well.
But the claim is false.
The proof attached to Jordan's letter, which is an email exchange between FBI personnel, only has evidence the tags will be applied to investigate and assess threats directed against school officials, as other independent fact-checking organizations have noted.
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