“Radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” (RTC) was of interest to the FBI because, ostensibly, it posed an extremist threat. Special Agent Kyle Seraphin, who was suspended indefinitely from the bureau in June 2022, released an internal FBI memo that called Catholics who preferred the Latin Mass “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist,” which “almost certainly presents new mitigation opportunities.”

In other words, Catholics who prefer this bigoted ideology attract right-wing extremists and need intervention — at least according to this document’s source material.

Under whose advice did the FBI so classify Catholics who attend Latin Mass? The Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is notorious for perfecting “the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton race-bait shakedown model for, in effect, extorting money from corporations,” as our Mark Alexander put it. The SPLC has labeled the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, and the American College of Pediatrics as “hate groups.” In fact, these organizations in the SPLC’s mind are on par with the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC has identified nine different RTC groups that the FBI document listed.

Kyle Seraphin stated that the SPLC was not a viable source for the FBI to use. He said the “SPLC was not legitimate when I was at Quantico.” Another former FBI agent, George Hill, who worked as an analyst for the bureau for 11 years, called this document “poorly sourced from sources who use unsubstantiated data to draw their own conclusions and not in compliance with FBI publication guidelines.”

Even politicians chimed in on the FBI’s troubling direction based on this document. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said: “The right to worship freely is fundamental and sacred. This sort of government abuse — the FBI spying on faithful Virginia Catholics and treating them like potential terrorists — is what I expect in Communist Cuba. Not here, in a country founded as a beacon of freedom for religious minorities.”

GOP House representatives are interested in investigating the political weaponization of the FBI and other deep state entities against conservatives and conservative values. Last Wednesday, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability heard testimony from former Twitter executives about the coercive relationship they had with the FBI as evidenced in the Twitter Files. There are other instances too. The DOJ has been weaponized to prosecute pro-life activists for violating the FACE Act while basically ignoring the actual acts of arson and vandalism by pro-abortion activists, which have been particularly prevalent since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.

Furthermore, George Hill exposed the pressure that that Boston branch of the bureau was put under for a January 6 persecution campaign. According to Hill, the Washington field office was exerting pressure on the Boston branch to open investigations on 140 people who took a bus ride to the rally on January 6, 2021. Boston resisted, Hill explained, saying: “We cannot open up preliminary investigations on someone for using a financial instrument in the District. And so they pushed back, and Boston did not take any action on those names.”

Some theorize that part of the problem with the FBI’s overzealous investigations are the rotten fruits of the September 11 terror attacks. Former Senate investigator Jason Foster explained: “After 9/11, everybody was upset that we didn’t connect the dots. We didn’t find a needle in the haystack, and what’s happened since is we turned the FBI into a domestic surveillance organization, and now we collect tens of thousands of haystacks and now it’s even harder to find the needles. And this is a perfect example of that, where you have tons of people [who] just want to push numbers, and they want to get tons of cases open so that they can say they’re addressing domestic violent extremism and they can say that there’s a big problem with it.”

Perhaps some of it is this middle management job security scheme within the FBI, but there are ever-mounting instances of partisan attacks by the deep state, and it is deeply troubling. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Translation: Who will guard the guards themselves?

To its credit, the FBI did issue this statement about the document labeling Latin Mass attendees as hot beds for extreme ideology. The FBI told The Daily Signal:

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.

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 FBI is committed to sound analytic tradecraft and to investigating and preventing acts of violence and other crimes while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.

Retracting the memo and scouring it from the systems is a good step. Perhaps it signals a larger self-correct for the FBI. Only time will tell.