Former President Joe Biden’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) engaged in a cover-up to hide the sweeping nature of its anti-Catholic surveillance effort, where former director Christopher Wray appears to have lied to Congress claiming the operation was contained to a single memorandum.
New documents released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that the FBI actually had a bureau-wide investigation into what they deemed were “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” in the now-infamous “Richmond memo.”
The government concluded that these Catholics believe “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology,” and are somehow susceptible to “extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric,” and, in an egregious violation of the First Amendment, used far-left sources to justify a surveillance campaign against them.
The memo, produced by the Richmond, Virginia, field office, was distributed to over 1,000 FBI personnel across the country prior to its public disclosure by a whistleblower in 2023.
None of the recipients of the memo raised concerns about the memo, according to the documents, and the Richmond office was lauded for its effort if it got any response at all.
In direct contradiction of Wray’s congressional testimony that the project was limited to a single document from the Richmond field office, Grassley found that at least 13 other documents and five attachments using the phrase “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” were produced.
Wray, in his March 8, 2023, testimony, claimed he was “aghast” when he learned about the memo and “took steps immediately to withdraw it and remove it from FBI systems,” adding, “It was a product by one field office, which of course we have scores and scores of these products, and when we found out about it, we took action.”
The former FBI director did not, however, acknowledge the existence of another draft intended for distribution to the entire bureau. In a Tuesday letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, Grassley said, “It was clearly a separate product, since it involved a different planned distribution to the whole Bureau, and a different chain of review, through the Counterterrorism Division.”
Grassley said the second memo is proof “once again that Director Wray’s previous testimony to Congress that the Richmond analysts produced a ’single product’ was false.”
“Nevertheless, this draft external memo repeated the unfounded link between traditional Catholicism and violent extremism that was present in the internal Domain Perspective,” he added. “It also contained different content from the internal Domain Perspective, notably deleting references to the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
The FBI relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a radically far-left organization known for labeling Christian and conservative organizations as “hate groups” on its “hate map,” to identify some of the Catholic groups to be targeted.
The SPLC and its “hate map” was used by a Virginia man to target the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., and shoot the group’s security guard. The shooter said he used the “hate map” to find organizations upon which to exact his violence, adding he wanted “to kill as many as possible.”
SPLC was likewise used by members of the scam January 6 Committee and attempts to subvert support for Christian and conservative organizations by including them as “hate groups.”
The subsequent documents produced after the Richmond memo also cited the SPLC.
In the letter, Grassley said reliance on the SPLC “raises serious concerns that FBI field offices may have relied on the Richmond memo, and placed groups in their areas of responsibility under suspicion based on reporting from the deeply biased sources used in the memo.”
After the Richmond memo was exposed by the whistleblower, documents show that FBI leadership directed the deletion of the draft second memo, as well as a full list of the personnel who were able to access the Richmond memo.
According to Grassley, then-Deputy Director Paul Abbate ordered the deletion in an attempt at “a permanent removal of the memorandum, as well as any edits or references, from all FBI systems.” Abbate ordered the agent in charge of the Richmond office to “pull it down” on the day that the Richmond memo was exposed.
In the days succeeding the Richmond memo’s release, the Operational Technology Division (OTD) at the FBI told the Richmond office that an FBI official, whose name has thus far been redacted, also ordered them to “pull down” a spreadsheet showing the list of users who were able to access the memo.
Grassley said he was told by FBI staff that the deleted files could be recovered, but that “no such files were ever produced.”
Now that the Trump administration is in charge of the FBI, and looking to find out what happened as well as the anti-Catholic and otherwise far-left bias among its ranks, Grassley is asking for Patel to reveal the OTD officer who ordered the list be taken down.
Grassley is also asking Patel for documentation of all instructions to delete files and the reasons given for the deletions including if they were intended to hide actions from congressional oversight.