Tag Archive for: FBITargetsCatholics

Garland Won’t Say How Many FBI Plants Are in Catholic Churches

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

And in the latest episode of how your government ignores real problems to destroy peaceful patriots, Attorney General Merrick Garland will not say how many FBI informants are in Catholic churches, claiming he doesn’t know. Sort of like how the FBI didn’t know it was involved in (and possibly organized) the January 6 “riot” until it was proved otherwise?

A January FBI memo urged investigation of allegedly “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” in traditional Catholic communities and urged “‘the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source developments’ against traditionalist Catholics, including those who favor the Latin Mass.” I bet those radicals even open-carry rosaries!!! Horrifying! The FBI’s source for the supposedly racist and hateful activities of traditional Catholics was the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an extremely biased, radical leftist group that attempts to bankrupt conservative organizations by labeling them “hate groups.” The FBI has since claimed it removed the anti-Catholic memo from its database.

The issue is that we cannot trust the FBI—or the DOJ (the FBI operates under DOJ jurisdiction). The FBI misses real terrorists all the time and yet has been aggressively harassing, arresting, and/or raiding peaceful pro-life activists, Trump and his supporters, and parents who speak out against stupid school policies. We cannot trust a single thing the FBI (or its bosses like Garland) says to us, especially when it’s protecting itself.

The Daily Signal quoted Sen. Josh Hawley (D-MO) grilling Garland during a Senate hearing. Biden’s AG at first denied that the Justice Department (DOJ) could do any investigations based on religion or that it is “cultivating sources and spies in Latin Mass parishes and other Catholic parishes around the country,” as Hawley put it.

“I saw the document you have. It is appalling. It is appalling. I’m in complete agreement with you. I understand that the FBI has withdrawn it and is now looking into how this could ever have happened,” Garland fumbled. Oh, I think you and the FBI do know how it happened, Merrick. The Biden administration has done its best to push the radical LGBTQ agenda and attack anything that is not new and slavish to its ideology. Devout Christians and Jews are particularly threatening to the Biden regime’s warped worldview and its demand for complete and quasi-religious compliance.

Garland claimed he’s “looking into” how the FBI published the memo in the first place. “I will tell you how it happened,” Hawley fired back. “This memorandum, which is supposed to be intelligence, cites extensively the Southern Poverty Law Center, which goes on to identify all of these different Catholics as being part of hate groups.” The senator continued, “Is this how the FBI, under your direction and leadership, is this how they do their intelligence work? They look at left-wing advocacy groups, to target Catholics? Is this what’s going on? Clearly, it is. How is this happening?”

Based on the memo, Garland’s answer was a lie. “The FBI is not targeting Catholics,” the AG asserted, “and as I’ve said, this is an inappropriate memorandum, and it doesn’t reflect the methods that the FBI is supposed to be using. It should not be relying on any single organization without doing its own work.” No kidding, Sherlock.

Hawley then asked, “How many informants do you have in Catholic churches across America?” To which the entirely untrustworthy Garland replied, “I don’t know, and I don’t believe we have any informants aimed at Catholic churches. We have a rule against investigations based on First Amendment activity, and Catholic churches are obviously First Amendment activity. I don’t know the specific answer.” That assertion about the First Amendment is particularly ironic, considering that the DOJ and FBI were directly involved in pressuring social media to censor the First Amendment right to free speech.

Oh, by the way, Garland previously lied during testimony about the FBI targeting (with anti-terrorism tools) parents who objected to schools’ policies. So we can’t trust a thing he said during the Senate testimony.

As Hawley put it to Garland, “You don’t know the specifics of anything, it seems. But apparently on your watch this Justice Department is targeting Catholics, targeting people of faith, specifically for their faith views. Mr. Attorney General, I’ll just say to you, it’s a disgrace.”

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This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

EXCLUSIVE: The Daily Signal Demands Documents on FBI Targeting ‘Radical Traditional Catholics’

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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The Daily Signal filed a Freedom of Information Act request this week demanding that the FBI turn over all documents related to “radical traditional Catholics” and the Southern Poverty Law Center, as news broke that the FBI had published an internal memo about “radical traditional Catholics” citing the SPLC, which brands mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits “hate groups,” putting them on a map with the Ku Klux Klan.

Although the FBI has since rescinded the memo, the FOIA request, submitted by the Heritage Oversight Project on behalf of The Daily Signal, should turn up related documents and shine more light on the situation.

FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin, who published the memo on UncoverDC.com Wednesday, had teased the release on Twitter: “Wait just a moment: the @FBI is writing intel products about ‘radical traditional Catholics’ (RTCs) and disseminating that that [sic] some Catholic Churches are a platform to promote violence?!”

“Because the FBI is Constitutionally prohibited from defining, issuing judgements on, or investigating non-violent religious practice and religious groups, the reported FBI intelligence product(s) suggest that the FBI is in possession of evidence that a nebulously ill-defined group of Catholics, to include some Catholic churches, have engaged in acts that fall within the elements of domestic terrorism violations of the United States Code,” Mike Howell, a senior adviser and investigative columnist at The Daily Signal, wrote in the FOIA request.

“Otherwise, it appears the FBI would not have undertaken any such analysis for a valid purpose,” Howell added.

The FOIA demands all documents with the terms “Southern Poverty Law Center” and “Catholic”; “SPLC” and “Catholic”; “traditional Catholic”; “RTC”; “Latin Mass” and “extremist”; and more.

The Daily Signal filed the FOIA on Wednesday, around the time that Seraphin, the FBI whistleblower, published the document he had earlier teased on Twitter.

The document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” characterizes RTCs by “the rejection of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II, particularly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”

The memo suggests that the FBI should monitor these Catholics through “the development of sources with access,” including in “places of worship,” and it cites a list of “hate groups” published by the SPLC.

As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents.

After the SPLC fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, a former staffer claimed that the SPLC’s accusations of “hate” are a “cynical fundraising scam” aimed at “bilking northern liberals.” Critics across the political spectrum have voiced opposition and alarm at the organization’s hate group smears.

In 2012, a terrorist targeted the Family Research Council’s headquarters in the nation’s capital, entering the lobby with a semiautomatic pistol and then shooting and wounding a guard. The man told the FBI that he found the conservative organization on the SPLC’s “hate map” and intended to kill everyone in the building. That man pleaded guilty to committing an act of terror and received a 25-year prison sentence. The SPLC condemned the attack, but has kept the Family Research Council on its hate map ever since.

After The Daily Signal reached out to the FBI for comment on the document Wednesday, the FBI responded with a rare public retraction.

“While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, this particular field office product—disseminated only within the FBI—regarding racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI,” the FBI told The Daily Signal in a statement emailed Thursday.

“Upon learning of the document, FBI Headquarters quickly began taking action to remove the document from FBI systems and conduct a review of the basis for the document,” the bureau added.

Current and former FBI sources told The Daily Signal that the FBI has long considered the SPLC unreliable. “We got briefings that SPLC was not legitimate when I was at Quantico,” said Seraphin, the FBI whistleblower who released the memo.

George Hill, whose 11 years at the bureau included a stint as a supervisory intelligence analyst, called the memo “poorly sourced from sources who use unsubstantiated data to draw their own conclusions and not in compliance with FBI publication guidelines.” He said the Directorate of Intelligence released guidelines barring analysts from relying on the SPLC.

The Daily Signal FOIA may turn up documents revealing whether the FBI rejected that guidance and why. It may also reveal what led the FBI’s Richmond office to focus on traditional Catholics and whether any agents actually infiltrated Catholic churches.

On Friday, Virginia Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares and 19 other state attorneys general sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, demanding that the Department of Justice and FBI “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.”

The attorneys general threatened legal action otherwise, promising to “take all lawful and appropriate means to protect the rights of our constituents as guaranteed by our Constitution.”

The attorneys general demanded that the DOJ release the full report, produce any documentation used in drafting it, produce any supporting documents and investigate how the report was drafted, and divulge whether the FBI has been using operatives to infiltrate houses of worship.

“Virginia has always protected our inalienable right to worship freely—without interference or intimidation,” Miyares told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “The leaked anti-Catholic FBI memo from our state capital that labeled Catholic Virginians as ‘violent extremists’ because of their religious beliefs is simply un-American and the suggestion that agents should recruit Catholics to spy on their fellow parishioners is just wrong.”

“Virginians should not and will not be targeted by their government because of their religious beliefs,” he added.

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This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.