Pro-life father Paul Vaughn recounts gunpoint FBI arrest, says DOJ report confirms targeting of pro-life activists under Biden

Pro-life activist Paul Vaughn recounted in an Aug. 2 Wall Street Journal op-ed how an armed FBI arrest “shattered” his family’s life, arguing that a recent Department of Justice (DOJ) report confirms that the Biden administration deliberately targeted him and other pro-life activists.

Vaughn, a Christian father of 11, described federal agents arriving at his rural Tennessee home in October 2022 and arresting him at gunpoint in front of his wife and children. 

“My children watched in fear as I was handcuffed and led away,” Vaughn wrote, “and when my wife desperately asked what was happening, where the agents were taking me and on what authority, her pleas went unanswered.”

According to Vaughn, the arrest stemmed from his participation in a March 2021 pro-life demonstration at an abortion facility in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, where he said activists prayed and sang hymns. Federal prosecutors alleged that Vaughn and another defendant deliberately prolonged negotiations with police to give other demonstrators time to block access to the facility. 

As Zeale News previously reported, a federal jury in January 2024 convicted Vaughn and five other pro-lifers of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act through physical obstruction. Vaughn was later sentenced to three years of supervised release. 

“What happened to me wasn’t an accident or an overzealous mistake but a coordinated campaign against pro-life advocates like me,” Vaughn wrote.

President Donald Trump pardoned Vaughn and nearly two dozen other pro-life activists on Jan. 23, 2025, three days after taking office, while Vaughn’s appeal was pending. 

Vaughn and his family recently reached a seven-figure settlement with the federal government over the prosecution and FBI arrest, Zeale News reported. 

>> DOJ reaches settlement with pro-life father prosecuted under Biden administration <<

“I give thanks that I can write this from my home, surrounded by family and with my freedom restored,” Vaughn wrote. “Yet every time I am called to recount what happened that morning, the pain is as fresh as the day it occurred.”

Vaughn connected the settlement to an April report from the DOJ’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, which examined the Biden administration's enforcement of the FACE Act and federal officials’ coordination with the abortion industry. 

“Recent revelations show that we weren’t casualties of blind justice but instead carefully selected targets of a politically motivated campaign against pro-life Americans,” Vaughn wrote about the report. “None of this is easy to reckon with. The Justice Department, the institution charged with protecting Americans equally under the law, was weaponized against me and other people of faith for the peaceful exercise of our pro-life beliefs.”

>> DOJ releases report on Biden admin’s ‘weaponization’ of FACE Act <<

According to the report, the National Abortion Federation provided federal officials with information about pro-life demonstrations. Vaughn wrote that the organization maintained files on pro-life advocates containing photographs, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and, in some cases, images of their spouses and children, and shared it directly with the DOJ and FBI.

“Now we know the full picture,” Vaughn wrote: “The Justice Department’s report found that the Biden administration systematically weaponized the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act against pro-life Americans while closely coordinating with abortion-industry groups to identify, surveil and target us for prosecution.”

He cited an email in which the former director of the DOJ’s Biden-era Reproductive Rights Task Force called the federation’s security director an “MVP” because he provided real-time information about pro-life demonstrations that “usually result[ed] in an investigation/prosecution.”

Vaughn also accused former DOJ prosecutor Sanjay Patel of withholding FACE Act prosecution data that Vaughn’s defense team sought to bolster its argument that the DOJ was selectively prosecuting pro-life activists. According to Vaughn, Patel said he did not maintain the requested data, but the task force report later indicated that Patel possessed the information and had provided it to the National Abortion Federation. 

“The evidence that might have demonstrated the government was treating us differently was withheld from the Americans being prosecuted and handed to the organizations that helped target us,” Vaughn said. “Mr. Patel was among the prosecutors fired before the report’s release — a small but significant measure of accountability for those who presided over this campaign.”

Vaughn praised Trump for granting the pardons and credited the current DOJ with investigating the previous administration’s conduct, releasing the report, and settling his family’s claims. He called those actions steps toward “restoring faith in government and in the idea that America’s promise of equal justice under law still means something.”

“A Christian should be able to stand on a public sidewalk or in a building open to the public, pray quietly, peacefully share the pro-life message, and go home to his family without fear that a federal task force is building a file on him and taking cues from an abortion industry lobby,” Vaughn concluded. “That isn’t a radical request. I pray this marks a turning point — for pro-life Christians and for every American who believes that justice must be blind and speaking the truth isn’t a crime.”