AMAC Exclusive – By Aaron Flanigan
A new report just released by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has offered shocking new insights into the full extent of the FBI’s efforts to use government power and resources to target, intimidate, and harass Catholics, pro-life activists, and other members of the religious community.
The December 4 report found, among other disturbing revelations, that the FBI “abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists” when agency operatives in Richmond, Virginia, circulated a memo designating so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholic[s]” as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”
“The Committee and Select Subcommittee discovered that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment and the FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership,” the House report states. “Not only did the FBI propose to develop sources, but it already interviewed a priest and choir director affiliated with a Catholic church in Richmond, Virginia, for the memorandum.”
In other words, instead of infiltrating criminal gangs or drug cartels, the FBI was targeting Catholics purely on account of their strong faith.
The report continues: “Most concerning of all, without the disclosure of the brave whistleblower [who disclosed details of the FBI interviews], the Richmond memorandum would still be operative in FBI systems, violating the religious liberties of millions of Catholic Americans.”
According to the report, the FBI also “singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists”—another stunning indication that the federal government is openly targeting Americans on the basis of their political views and religious belief.
Contrary to FBI Director Chris Wray’s statement that the Richmond memo was a one-off occurrence, the House report also found that the Richmond field office relied on intel from FBI offices in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Portland in making its assessment—a strong indication that other local FBI offices have undertaken similar anti-Catholic operations.
Given these revelations—and given that the FBI backtracked from the contents of the Richmond memo only after it leaked and became the subject of widespread backlash in the conservative media—who is to say what other investigations or protocols the Bureau is secretly deploying against religious groups or other law-abiding Americans?
The House report further concludes that the Bureau made “errors” at “every step of the drafting, review, approval, and removal process of the memorandum”—signaling that the FBI was not only targeting Catholics in a way that abused the agency’s procedures, but was also doing so haphazardly.
Moreover, the anti-Catholic memo “relied on a single investigation in the Richmond Field Office’s area of responsibility”—and despite the FBI’s use of the term “radical-traditionalist Catholic” as the basis for its memo, Bureau employees reportedly “could not define the meaning of a [radical-traditionalist Catholic] when preparing, editing, or reviewing the memorandum.”
In other words, the FBI’s Richmond office issued a full-scale anti-Catholic memo based on a single investigation in which they could not even define the term at the center of the case.
In some cases, the FBI’s targeting of Christians has gone beyond merely spying on local churches. In another sign of unprecedented hostility last year, more than a dozen armed FBI agents raided the home of Mark Houck, a Catholic pro-life activist and father of seven, who was charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for praying the rosary outside of a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Though FBI and Biden administration officials have repeatedly attempted to reassure the American people about these incidents, those who defend the unborn or practice the Catholic faith rightly remain skeptical.
After all, the Biden DOJ has provided the American people with little reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. In just the past few months, the DOJ has deployed FBI agents to target patriotic parents, raided the home of Biden’s top political rival, and last year refused to lift a finger to stop the onslaught of violent attacks against crisis pregnancy centers and Catholic parishes in the wake of the June 2022 Dobbs decision.
Is it any wonder then that Christians and conservatives have lost confidence in the Biden DOJ’s ability to enforce the law impartially, without fear or favor? And is it truly that far-fetched to believe the DOJ is deliberately targeting Americans of faith? “You wouldn’t be here if the Trump administration was in the White House,” Mark Houck recalled saying to the multitude of agents who stormed his home last fall.
This realization continues to grow among Americans of every faith. Unless the Biden team brings its political and faith-based persecutions to end, they could soon face a massive reckoning at the ballot box.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
