A right-leaning government watchdog group has documents that indicate the FBI Richmond field office’s alleged targeting of Catholics in the United States had been reviewed by the agency’s internal counsel.
Judicial Watch announced in a press release that it had obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
While many of the documents were heavily redacted, the watchdog organization claimed it found evidence that the FBI’s leaked “anti-Catholic memo” was reviewed by its Office of General Counsel.
One document, dated January 23, 2023, contained a section under the subtitle “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.” The document indicated it was reviewed by “OGC/CDC [Office of General Counsel/Chief Deputy Counsel].”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, an FBI spokesperson said:
“The allegation that top lawyers in the FBI — or anyone outside of the Richmond Field Office — approved the product is false. The FBI’s internal review confirmed that FBI senior leadership learned about the product in February, well after it was internally published, and quickly directed that it be removed from FBI systems. Any characterization that the FBI is targeting Catholics is false.
“We have stated repeatedly that the intelligence product did not meet the exacting standards of the FBI and was quickly removed from FBI systems. The internal review conducted by the FBI found no malicious intent to target Catholics or members of any other religious faith and did not identify any investigative steps taken as a result of the product.”
The FBI went on to claim that it does not conduct investigations based just on religious practices, which fall under the protection of the First Amendment.
“These documents disprove the FBI’s narrative that the spy operation against Catholics and churches was limited to one field office. In fact, the operation seems to have been approved by top lawyers in the FBI,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, per the press release. “These documents should trigger a criminal inquiry into this Biden FBI scandal.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the FBI has been coming under fire in recent years over allegations of weaponizing the powers of federal law enforcement for political ends. Relatedly, the House Judiciary Committee has been conducting oversight hearings looking into alleged abuses at the FBI.
At a hearing in September, Rep. Jefferson Van Drew (R-NJ) grilled Attorney General Merrick Garland over the anti-Catholic memo.
“I hold you accountable for the … memo. Imagine sending agents undercover into Roman Catholic churches because they were supposedly domestic terrorists. … It was your FBI that did this. It was your FBI that was sending — and we have the memos, we have the emails — were sending undercover agents into Catholic churches,” Van Drew said.
