Documents released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday appear to contradict former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s claim that a controversial 2023 memo targeting “radical traditionalist Catholics” was a one-off and the work of a single bureau field office.
Extent of FBI’s targeting of ‘radical traditionalist Catholics’ greater than Biden officials claimed, GOP senator reveals
The Biden-era FBI chief told House lawmakers in July of 2023 that the memo – which described the purported overlaps between Catholics who oppose abortion rights and would-be terrorists as an opportunity for “threat mitigation” and “source development” – was “a single product by a single field office.”
However, the new FBI files obtained by Grassley show the bureau produced “at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used anti-Catholic terminology,” as well as a second memo updating the FBI’s Richmond Field Office’s case against “radical” Catholics.
“Director Wray’s testimony was inaccurate not only because it failed to reveal the scope of the memo’s production and dissemination, but also because it failed to reveal the existence of a second, draft product on the same topic intended for external distribution to the whole FBI,” Grassley wrote in a letter to current FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday, demanding more documents.
The second FBI memo, released by Grassley, was also drafted by the FBI’s Richmond office and repeated the “unfounded link between traditional Catholicism and violent extremism.”
The backlash over the whistleblower disclosure of the initial memo led the Richmond office to never release the second version, according to the Iowa Republican.
However, the first “anti-Catholic Richmond Memo” was “widely distributed” in February 2023 to more than 1,000 FBI employees nationwide, according to Grassley’s findings.
“This 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,” the senator informed Patel.
Additionally, the new documents reveal that Richmond FBI officials worked with the bureau’s field offices in Louisville, Portland, and Milwaukee as they drafted the memo – further belying Wray’s testimony.
Grassley and numerous conservatives and Catholics have criticized the FBI for largely relying on the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” classifications when putting together the memo.
“I continue to investigate the Richmond memo and the culture at the FBI that allowed it to be produced and approved,” the senator informed Patel.
