Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio reveals that the Federal Bureau of Investigation coordinated to target Catholics.
According to a memo released by Jordan and Republican Limited Government Chairman Mike Johnson of Louisiana, multiple FBI field offices were involved in tagging traditionalist Catholic groups as potential hotbeds of domestic extremism.
“[T]he newly produced version of the document explicitly states that FBI Richmond ‘[coordinated] with’ FBI Portland in preparing the assessment,” the two wrote in a letter addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray, asking why the bureau redacted this information in previous versions of the document.
“Thus, it appears that both FBI Portland and FBI Los Angeles field offices were involved in or contributed to the creation of FBI’s assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists,” the letter continued.
Wray previously told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the memo, which originated with the bureau’s Richmond, Virginia, field office, had left him appalled and that “we took steps immediately to withdraw it and remove it from FBI systems.”
“I will note,” Wray said in March. “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 memo, which was titled ““Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” details the FBI’s observation of domestic terrorism in radical-traditionalist Catholic or RTC.
“FBI Richmond assesses the increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) in radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development,” the memo read.
This comes as Christian discrimination is on the rise amid rising totalitarianism. According to an 84-page report released by the Family Research Council (FRC), there have been 420 documented acts of hostility against 397 separate churches in the U.S. between January 2018 and September 2022. This includes incidents of vandalism, bomb threats, arson, and gun-related violence.
The report also noted attacks against churches that took place across a wide range of Christian congregations, as well as Unitarian-Universalist and Mormon churches, in 45 states and Washington, D.C.
