Posted on 12/07/2023 6:03:25 AM PST by Twotone
Congressional lawmakers released an interim report Monday titled, "The FBI's Breach of Religious Freedom: The Weaponization of Law Enforcement Against Catholic Americans," providing a glimpse into the lengths the FBI has gone to cast those with conservative religious beliefs as threats apparently requiring state surveillance and "mitigation."
The new report from the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government indicates the FBI:
"abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists"; "relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment"; "proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership"; and would likely still be "violating the religious liberties of millions of Catholic Americans" were it not for former FBI special agent Kyle Seraphin's disclosure.
The subcommittee began looking seriously into the FBI's apparent suspicion of conservative Catholics after Seraphin blew the whistle in February over the existence of an internal memo released by the FBI field office in Richmond that warned violent extremists are attracted to "Radical traditionalist Catholic ideology."
Finding the FBI uncooperative after the initial revelations about the memo, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) issued a subpoena to Director Christopher Wray in April demanding documents pertaining to the internal January 2023 memo.
The new report indicated on the basis of documents obtained via the subpoena that there was "no legitimate basis for the memorandum to insert federal law enforcement into Catholic houses of worship."
The pretext for the anti-Catholic initiative appears to have been the self-identification of a single parishioner under investigation as a "radical-traditionalist Catholic." Agents reportedly interviewed the parishioner's priest and the choir director related to his church while developing the memo.
While FBI employees reportedly could not define the RTC descriptor, the phantom danger nevertheless became the meat of the FBI-wide memo concerning the alleged dangers of "radical" Catholics.
Extra to building a blanket condemnation on a lone case and an ill-defined descriptor, the two FBI employees who penned the internal memo reportedly admitted their sources cited in the document were politically biased. The sources included the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and the Atlantic.
Salon recently evidenced its skew by advancing the claim that "MAGA and Christian nationalism" constitute greater threats than Hamas "could ever be." The SPLC has claimed that RTCs "may make up the largest single group of serious antisemites in America."
The FBI later admitted that the memo "failed to consider the potential bias and credibility of open-source information cited in support of the [document's] assessment" and that the alleged link between racially motivated violent extremists and RTC lacked "sufficient evidence or articulable support."
It appears the slapdash stigmatization of this particular group of conservative Christians was driven by more than mere bigotry. After all, the memo claimed that increasing extremist interest ahead of the 2024 general election in pro-life, pro-family, and reality-affirming Catholic views — views ostensibly antithetical to those held by incumbent federal powers — created an opportunity for the FBI to execute new "mitigation efforts," such as the development of informants in churches.
According to the report, FBI Richmond, the office that originated the memo, has not apologized or canned any of the employees involved in creating the document.
The report concluded, "This ill-conceived and ill-administered memorandum is a stark warning of the need for scrupulous review of FBI documents with the potential to circumvent Americans' civil liberties and the right to free exercise of religion."
"Remember when Joe Biden stood in front of Independence Hall and talked about how one half of the country is fascist?" Chairman Jordan told Fox News Monday. "It's this whole mindset. If you're pro-life, if you're a traditional Catholic, somehow you're radical, somehow you're an extremist."
The FBI needs to have their entire executive management purged.
Start with the director, assistant directors, and special agents in charge of all the field offices. Most are at or near retirement eligibility.
The FBI became “woke” during the Obama/Holder/Comey/Lynch era. They brought in college kids, hired a bunch of women, blacks, pushed LGBTQIA and hired loads of them. Today the FBI is suffering from the demographic shift of that era which they sold as making the FBI reflect American society more. It was that “strength in diversity” argument which is devoid of merit and best qualified.
Irony,
Under Hoover the FBI was essentially a Catholic boys club.
Jews and Roman Catholics. Two groups who think the Democratic/Communists are their friends.
And they saw a commie behind every tree.
Americans who go to a Latin Mass are a clear and present danger; so says Wray.
The WH/FBI will go after the Jews next. This is a pattern when Fascists take power, and the Democrats are Fascists, make no mistake about it
No way they stopped just because we found out about it, they are still at it. They didn’t stop censoring people on Google / YouTube / FaceBook / Instagram when it was revealed.
The Jews are Democrat loyalists, why bother?
They should have checked more places.
The FBI needs to be dismantled.
I would bet they are still doing it. No one pays a price, so why stop?
If anyone wants to read the complete fbi memo, I guess the house judiciary republicans released the whole thing in pdf. I had never read an fbi memo concerning anything like this, it was pretty interesting and full of what I can only call “fbi speak.”
Freegards
last week they called me a White Christian Nationalist and this week i’m Radical Traditionalist Catholic, so i’m both now...
That didn’t take long.
Let the cheap shots roll.
Hoover foamed at the mouth regards commies.
Realize, the FBI had a major commie threat during the aftermath of the Great Depression and in the formation years of the FBI. Then came the 50s and the big red scare (which back then was real, unlike this Ukraine farce today).
If Hoover were alive today to see what sort of faggots and commies are in the leadership of his organization, he’d jump from his HQs.
And no, Hoover was not a cross dressing closet homo. That’s Hollywood selling the idea that inside of every homophobe is a closet homo. Hollywood creates there own “version” of history, religion, war... which usually fits an ultra liberal agenda.
The Republicans could stop this if they really wanted to. Just zero out the FBI budget until the entire senior leadership agrees to resign.
L
You need someone to fill the gap created if you do.
They do provide some actual service to the American public when they are not attending woke homo, black, Latino woman’s, Asian, native Indian training and arresting or spying on non establishment political candidates and their grass root following.
Not trying to be funny, but they still do actually go after real criminals, spies and terrorists, in between all the faddy trendy politically motivated crap they do.
Most states have their own investigation units. In GA we have the GBI. The US Marshals can step up nationally. The FBI would have to be stripped down to the bottom and all new people hired. That’s the only way you could fix it.
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