The FBI has released documents confirming that the Bid administration was targeting pro-life Catholics.
For months, pro-life advocates, Republicans and Catholic Church leaders have condemned Joe Biden and his administration about a memo targeting pro-life Catholics.
As LifeNews.com has reported, the FBI Richmond bureau issued a memo on “radical-traditional Catholic ideology” that cited the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center. The FBI memo urged agents to probe the supposed nexus between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the SPLC and including a list of SPLC-designated “hate groups” for agents to target.
The federal agency quickly retracted the memo after massive criticism, but pro-life groups and pro-life elected officials want an investigation and accountability.
Part of that accountability came in the form of a request for more documents and the FBI handed over more paper this week about the controversial memo.
The new documents were only made available to the House Judiciary Committee. The FBI has requested that the committee not disseminate the documents without consulting it first.
The document release comes after Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the committee, threatened to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt over the bureau’s delay in responding to two subpoenas investigating alleged First Amendment violations from the bureau.
In response to CNA’s inquiry for comment on the documents, a House Judiciary Committee spokesperson said: “We’re reviewing the documents and everything remains on the table.”
Republicans are upset that the documents they have been getting from the FBI are excluding too much information that could be used to investigate the memo and its origins.
However, a July 17 press release from the House Judiciary Committee states that the documents shared by the FBI have been either “heavily redacted to exclude critical information” or the bureau has not produced the appropriate requested documents.
In Jordan’s recent July 17 letter to Wray, he said that the committee believes that “additional communications exist” between the FBI and the Diocese of Richmond, beyond what has already been handed over.
“Redacted documents produced to the committee highlight communications between the FBI and the Diocese of Richmond, but the redactions preclude the committee from fully understanding the nature of these interactions,” Jordan said in his letter.
The bureau is currently reviewing the records and will release them on a “rolling basis consistent with our obligations regarding law enforcement, national security, and other executive branch authorities and confidentiality interests,” the letter states.
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Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey and 19 other attorneys general have now issued a letter of condemnation.
“As Attorney General, I will protect the Constitution, which includes the basic right to religious liberty enshrined in the First Amendment,” said Attorney General Bailey. “We already knew that President Biden was launching an attack on the First Amendment rights of Americans, as evidenced by our landmark free speech case Missouri v. Biden, but now it’s clear that he’ll weaponize unelected federal bureaucrats to go after any American who doesn’t worship the ‘right way.’ The First Amendment includes both the right to free speech and religious liberty for a reason, and my office will use any tool necessary to defend the rights of all Missourians to worship as they please.”
The memorandum distinguishes between what the FBI deems acceptable and unacceptable Catholic beliefs and practices. The memorandum suggests that there are “radical traditionalists” who could be “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”
The letter states the FBI memo “identifies ‘radical-traditionalist Catholics’ as a potential ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.’ … Among those beliefs which distinguish the bad Catholics from the good ones are a preference for ‘the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings,’ and adherence to traditional Catholic teachings on sex and marriage (which the memorandum describes as ‘anti-LGBTQ’).”
Bailey said the FBI action was another attack on the First Amendment by Joe Biden, who is supposedly a practicing Catholic.
Bailey and the other attorneys general assert that the FBI memorandum “even appears to accuse the Supreme Court and the Governor of Virginia of ‘[c]atalyzing’ the bad Catholics through ‘legislation or judicial decisions in areas such as abortion rights, immigration, affirmative action, and LGBTQ protections,’ singling out the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Governor Youngkin’s support for sensible abortion regulations as examples.”
In the letter, General Bailey and the other states demand that the FBI and DOJ “desist from investigating and surveilling Americans who have done nothing more than exercise their natural and constitutional right to practice their religion in a manner of their choosing” and asked that the FBI “reveal to the American public the extent to which they have engaged in such activities.”
“We are the chief legal officers of our respective States charged not only with enforcing the law but also with securing the civil rights of our citizens,” the attorneys general continues. “The FBI must immediately and unequivocally order agency personnel not to target Americans based on their religious beliefs and practices.”
The attorneys general request a full explanation of the document’s origins, documents related to its implementation, information regarding how this document has already affected Virginia’s Catholic population, and information on whether the FBI has begun infiltrating houses of worship in conflict with the FBI’s internal guidelines.
Joining Bailey were AGs from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The full letter can be read by clicking here.
