They believe that there is more than just a single memo that pressed the FBI to investigate traditional Catholics.
By Catholics for Catholics
After a coalition of groups found out that the FBI was investigating traditional Catholics, they are now urging the current FBI director and the U.S. Attorney to release documents that prove there was religious discrimination against Catholics.
Led by Advancing American Freedom (AAF), the groups issued a Freedom of Information Access Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Justice and the FBI, to release documents connected to the surveillance and infiltration of Catholic groups in America and the distribution of the “Richmond Memo” that labeled traditionalist Catholic groups as potential “violent extremists.”
Fox News reported that the coalition is urging FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to release documents about the “pattern of dishonesty and religious discrimination at the FBI” after they say their search for answers was “stymied at every turn” by the Biden administration.
In an emailed statement sent to Fox News Digital, AAF said that despite its previous FOIA requests to Biden’s U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, they were “stymied at every turn.”
But the coalition, now under the Trump administration, is revamping its quest for answers and expanding its requests to also include any communications directing the destruction of documents relevant to their earlier requests.
The coalition is renewing its efforts after a very provocative FBI memo bared the agency for expending taxpayer dollars to infiltrate and monitor what it called “radical-traditionalist Catholic[s]” who it said presented possible “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism.”
According to the memo, the FBI assured readers that traditionalist Catholic groups “almost certainly” presented “opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development.”
But the memo caused a firestorm after it was revealed publicly, yet Wray downplayed it in congressional testimony in 2023, saying, “It was a product by one field office, which, of course, we have scores and scores of these products, and when we found out about it, we took action.”
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