Republican senators are demanding acting Attorney General Todd Blanche investigate five babies found outside a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic — a case the Biden administration refused to touch for four years.
Utah Senator Mike Lee and Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, along with more than 50 other lawmakers, are calling on Blanche to “comprehensively investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of five preborn children” whose remains were recovered by the Metropolitan Police Department in 2022.
The babies were allegedly aborted at the Washington Surgi-Clinic operated by late-term abortionist Dr. Cesare Santangelo.
“For four years, members of Congress have remained alarmed at this clear violation of life and law, but the Biden Administration Department of Justice refused to act.”
The lawmakers want to know if the babies were victims of infanticide or illegal partial-birth abortion. Their remains are currently in the possession of the D.C. Medical Examiner.
Blanche, who has been acting attorney general since April, is in the midst of a confirmation battle on Capitol Hill. He faced the Senate Judiciary Committee last week in a two-day hearing where lawmakers questioned him about the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, among other issues.
Lee and three other signatories of Tuesday’s letter — Senators Chuck Grassley, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley — all serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Blanche will need their votes to get to a full floor vote and then for confirmation.
As the committee prepares to vote, the signatories are calling on Blanche to conduct a thorough investigation into each child’s circumstances, including autopsies of the infants and preservation of all collected evidence.
That is not all. They also want the babies to be properly buried.
The letter reads: “We cannot undo the grievous, barbaric acts that killed these children in their most vulnerable stage, but we equally cannot allow such lawlessness and inhumanity to evade our justice system any longer. Under President Trump’s and your leadership, we are hopeful that these children will finally receive the justice they deserve.”
A Justice Department official told The Daily Wire on Tuesday afternoon that the DOJ has gathered and reviewed documents related to the DC Five and is in the process of finalizing that process and turning things over to Congress. Should Congress identify any crimes in the DOJ’s trove of documents, the DOJ will “certainly investigate those matters,” the official shared.
DOJ spokeswoman Kiersten Pels said, “The Department of Justice is aware of the Senators’ request and takes these matters seriously. As with all allegations of potential criminal conduct, the Department will review the information carefully and will investigate any credible allegations of criminal actions. The Department remains committed to following the facts and the law wherever they lead.”
Pro-life activists Lauren Handy and Terrisa Bukovinac originally discovered the baby bodies in boxes outside a Foggy Bottom abortion clinic in 2022 shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Advocates and Republican lawmakers have sounded the alarm for years about these babies, warning that they appear to have been brutally and illegally aborted in violation of federal law. But the Biden administration took no steps to properly investigate the matter, instead targeting the women who recovered the bodies.
Doctors estimated to The Daily Wire in 2022 that several of the babies were victims of late-term abortions — and that at least one baby may have been aborted using illegal partial-birth abortion methods, showing “deep lacerations to the posterior neck which presumably correlates to the method of abortion used to end her life.”
If the baby girl was alive when the abortionist made these lacerations, her circumstances would directly violate the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 (18 U.S. Code § 1531), which criminalizes the partial deliverance of a living child for the purpose of performing an overt act that intentionally takes the life of the child.
The lawmakers also point to the estimations of pro-life doctors, noting that one baby boy was estimated to be around 28 to 32 weeks, while another baby looked “like he should have been in the nursery” and was “about the same size as [her] granddaughter when she was born.”
Lee and Smith called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to conduct an investigation into the babies in 2022, but the Justice Department never investigated or responded.
Worse, after two years of inaction, reports indicated that the Department of Justice advised the Chief Medical Examiner to discard the bodies of the infants. Fortunately, members of Congress were able to intervene with the Chief Medical Examiner and urge him to preserve the bodies.
As recently as April, Republican Reps. Chip Roy (TX) and Andy Biggs (AZ) pushed FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate the babies and their circumstances.
The charges remain allegations. The case has not been proven in court.
