Records publicized this week by Senator Grassley reveal that the FBI’s targeting of Catholics was more extensive than was previously known.
Catholic leaders are speaking out against the FBI after congressional oversight efforts revealed that the bureau’s attempts to target Catholics were more extensive than previously thought.
The FBI’s targeting of traditionalist Catholics was evident in a leaked February 2023 memo from the Richmond, Virginia field office likening them to violent, bigoted extremists. Documents released earlier this week by Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) showed the Richmond memo was circulated to over 1,000 employees and discussed by other field offices in cities including Milwaukee and Louisville.
The FBI withdrew the Richmond memo due to widespread public backlash, but not before it was distributed and discussed among employees nationwide.
“That the FBI, an agency designed to protect Americans and protect our freedoms, was weaponized against peaceful, practicing Catholics is appalling,” said Ashley McGuire, senior fellow at the Catholic Association.
“Congress and we were lied to, plain and simple. This was not limited to one rogue officer in an isolated field office. This was a national campaign using the leverage of a powerful agency to target Catholics.”
The FBI produced over a dozen documents with similar anti-Catholic terminology and drafted a second anti-Catholic memo, Grassley’s records indicate. A congressional investigation previously made known the involvement of other field offices, but not the number of employees the memo was circulated to or the existence of other anti-Catholic documents.
The scope of the FBI’s anti-Catholic activities were much more extensive than former FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested in his congressional testimony downplaying the Richmond memo as the product of a single field office.
“We now know that the FBI under President Biden launched a nationally coordinated effort to monitor traditional Catholics as ‘potential domestic terrorists’ because his administration perceived them as political enemies,” said Josh Mercer, vice president of Catholic Vote, a conservative activist organization.
“This frontal assault on the First Amendment should horrify every American – and it must never be allowed to happen again.”
The Richmond memo’s anti-Catholic sentiment was informed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing organization with a long track record of maligning conservative groups as “extremist.” Some employees in the Milwaukee and Phoenix field offices questioned the FBI’s reliance on the SPLC for the information in the Richmond memo because of its political bias, the records show.
“It’s disturbingly ironic that President Biden’s Federal Bureau of Investigation relied on the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center for guidance on domestic threats rather than do its own homework. Profiling is widely rejected by law enforcement as an ineffective tool. Profiling based on religion is also gravely offensive to our nation’s commitment to religious freedom,” said Andrea Picotti-Bayer, director of the conscience project.
“We now know that, contrary to claims to the contrary, anti-Catholicism was not isolated to a field office in Richmond, Virginia. Catholics deserve a full reckoning.”
FBI Director Kash Patel has promised to investigate anti-Catholicism within the FBI and cooperate with congressional oversight on matters such as the Richmond memo. The FBI withdrew the Richmond memo due to widespread public backlash, but not before it was distributed and discussed among employees nationwide.