Early Friday morning, several dozen armed FBI agents arrived at the Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, home to arrest pro-life activist Mark Houck for violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Houck had just become the latest target of Merrick Garland’s predatory Department of Justice.
Houck, 48, was at home with his wife, Ryan Marie, and their seven young children when members of the SWAT team began pounding on the front door at 7:05 am.
In describing the scene afterward with LifeSiteNews reporter Patrick Delaney, Ryan Marie said, before Mark opened the door, he told the agents, “’Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.”
“But they just kept pounding and screaming.” When he finally opened the door, Ryan Marie said, “They had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house.”
She continued, “Our staircase is open, so [the kids] were all at the top of the stairs which faces the front door, and I was on the stairs as well, coming down. The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic.”
Ryan Marie told LifeSite that her husband “asked her to get him a sweatshirt and his rosaries, but when she returned, they already had loaded him into a vehicle.”
“After they had taken Mark, and the kids were all screaming that he was their best friend, the [FBI agents on her porch] kind of softened a bit,” she noted. “I think they realized what was happening. Or maybe they actually looked at the warrant. They looked pretty ashamed at what had just happened.”
Ryan Marie, who homeschools her children, is worried about long term psychological trauma and said she’s already reached out for some professional help.
Houck is a family man, a pro-life speaker and author, the founder and president of The King’s Men, a Christian group which “promotes healing for victims of pornography addiction,” and a “sidewalk counselor,” the report said. According to his wife, he travels to Philadelphia, which is a two hour drive from their rural Pennsylvania home, “every Wednesday to sidewalk counsel for six to eight hours at two different abortion centers.”
The warrant states that Houck allegedly attacked a patient escort outside an abortion clinic on two occasions. Ryan Marie told LifeSite “this charge comes from an incident that had already been thrown out of the District Court in Philadelphia but was somehow picked up by Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice.”
She explained her husband took their 12-year-old son to “sidewalk counsel” several times last year. A “pro-abortion protester” would repeatedly say “crude … inappropriate and disgusting things to their son” about Mark. Once this man told their son, “your Dad’s a fag.” The other remarks were “too vulgar to convey.”
Houck told him not to talk to his son. But, according to Ryan Marie, “he kept doing it and kind of came into [the son’s] personal space.”
And finally, “Mark shoved him away from his child, and the guy fell back. … He didn’t have any injuries or anything, but he tried to sue Mark.” But, early this summer, the case was “thrown out of court.”
A news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania portrays the charges quite a bit differently, as one would expect. It states: “Houck allegedly assaulted the victim, a 72-year-old man, identified in the Indictment as ‘B.L.,’ because B.L. was a volunteer escort at the reproductive health care clinic. In the first incident, B.L. was attempting to escort two patients exiting the clinic, when the defendant forcefully shoved B.L. to the ground. In the second incident, the defendant verbally confronted B.L. and forcefully shoved B.L. to the ground in front of the Planned Parenthood center, causing injuries to B.L. that required medical attention.”
It also states that if Houck is convicted, he “faces a maximum possible sentence of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines of up to $350,000.”
Clearly, the two stories are very different and we can’t possibly know the truth. However, given the Biden DOJ’s track record of overzealousness in targeting the administration’s political opponents, my money’s on Ryan Marie’s version.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that the DOJ’s account of events is accurate. Houck actually did shove a 72-year-old man to the ground – twice – because of his role as an abortion center escort. Was it necessary for the DOJ to send a force of 25 to 30 armed FBI agents to arrest him? Wouldn’t two men have been capable of making the arrest?
This behavior was absolutely disgusting and thuggish, and by any measure, it was excessive.
On Friday, Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, a Republican, issued a statement in which he called Houck’s arrest “an abuse of power.”
He reiterated that the case “was long thrown out by the District Court in Philadelphia” and that the Houck’s “seven children were traumatized and in tears as they witnessed their parents held at gunpoint and their father hauled away in handcuffs.”
“This show of force carried out by the Biden regime against ordinary Americans is an abuse of power that stands against the fundamental principles on which our country was founded.
“As governor, I will not allow the police state of Joe Biden to enforce his persecution against his political enemies on sacred Pennsylvania soil. Not on my watch.”
Mastriano is absolutely right.
The DOJ and the FBI have become the Democratic Party’s enforcement arm and it’s ruining the country.
A previous version of this article appeared on The Western Journal.
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The FBI publicity machine has kicked into gear on this case. As SWAT is a specific designation for a Special Weapons and Tactics team, they have denied that they sent a “SWAT” team, and claimed only “three or four agents” actually went to the door (leaving out how many surrounded the house, etc.).
They have learned very little from the Waco disaster, where they helped kill the children they claimed that they were trying to protect.
They’ve learned all kinds of things, mostly about how to obfuscate and cover their tracks.
A jackbooted stromtrooper by any other name is still a jackboot and a stormtrooper. Here’s hoping someday each and every one of these Nazi bastards all the way up to “American Himmler” Garland gets his own personal No-Knock and they all decide they’re feelin’ froggy enough to Resist Arrest.
I do not want to read another apology for “The Dedicated Professional Rank-And-File Agents of the FBI”. They are no better than the uneducated thugs that are hired by so many local PD’s. They don’t follow The Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold and defend because they’ve never read it or were incapable of comprehending what they read.
Amen. I am tired of Hannity apologizing for the ‘99% of FBI agents who are stand-up folks’. If that were true, there would be a revolution among the FBI rank and file against politicalizing of the Bureau. So far, that has not happened, and likely never will.
Actions reflect mirrors.
Masks frighten and hide.
Newness lacks knowledge.
Humanity holds strength.
Strength is humane.
Peace is strength.
Strong people frighten the weak causing rash actions – this FBI is masking fear, DOJ too. Their plans continue hiding what comes next, but the People should figure it out – it’s obvious.
At this point, in the folly the left is playing out, it is approaching time to go Old Testament on them. Several times in the Old Testament, God spoke to the children of Israel, instructed them to prepare for coming battles, and those instructions were a lot more than I think would be necessary to defeat this enemy. However, the instructions He gave were to “utterly defeat” the enemy.
By relying solely on the political machinery we are letting these problems linger, to the point that when we get around to it, it may already be too late. I have no interest in killing anyone, but when that day comes, it will happen. The left are acting as if they are kings, ruling over us. The political war of words will not fix this problem. Just see how many of any political party will do anything to strip power from these agencies, and DOJ. All their power has been usurped and is unconstitutional. If Congress doesn’t act, after we supposedly win back the House and senate, someone please tell me what else can be done.
We need to vote like it is our last chance to peaceably deal with this problem, because it probably is the last time.
The federal policing and intelligence agencies can no longer be trusted to do the job they are assigned, by the laws that enacted them. They have become the enemy of the people, who pay their paycheck. This government is no longer for, by, and of the people. It is for, by, and of the antichrist, and I think he will be revealed very soon. Say what you will, but this cannot stand.
When something becomes necessary, and people start thinking and calling you crazy for pointing it out, just remember, all those who say I’m crazy, that there is a clock ticking, and it is controlled by God, the only one who can know of the future. We people can only do what protects our immediate interests, and trust and believe in God because He will reign supreme, in the end. As it stands, we are the ones who are in a war and not responding. The left is at war against us, and Satan is their leader.
Are we really supposed to give benefit of the doubt to some of the employees of the FBI, when they won’t do anything to right this wrong? If they will not act, just who will? Congress? We are literally sitting around and letting them jail, raid, and harass innocent people for no other reason than politics.
That’s just wrong.