The Patriot Post® · Catholics Under FBI Surveillance
The Left, as Dennis Prager is wont to say, ruins everything it touches. Some of that ruin comes via weaponization of institutions, and there are few things more dangerous to Liberty than weaponizing the federal government against certain American citizens.
The House Select Subcommittee on Weaponization, led by Representative Jim Jordan, has been digging into various instances of this abuse of government power and yesterday released a letter about another finding related to the Catholic Church.
Many Catholic churches, along with dozens of pro-life pregnancy resource centers around the country, have been targeted by pro-abortion zealots ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June. It would be nice if the FBI would lift a finger to investigate that political violence. Instead, the FBI has been targeting the Catholic Church.
Joe Biden is, after all, a good bad Catholic.
“The FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis,” according to Jordan, and “the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith.”
We suppose the good news is that at least one FBI agent went to church.
Jokes aside, this is serious. “Americans attend church to worship and congregate for their spiritual and personal betterment,” Jordan explained. “They must be free to exercise their fundamental First Amendment rights without worrying that the FBI may have planted so-called ‘tripwire’ sources or other informants in their houses of worship.”
The FBI activity came to light thanks to a former agent who leaked a memo titled, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.” Issued by the FBI’s office in Richmond, Virginia, the January memo relied on information from the left-wing hate-hustling Southern Poverty Law Center to cast aspersions on and surveil certain Catholics “based on theological distinctions.”
Jordan discovered some information about that, but his Monday letter also scolded the FBI for stonewalling his committee and attached a subpoena. FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned the January memo back in March, saying he was “aghast” and “took steps immediately to withdraw it and remove it from FBI systems.” So perhaps he’ll now comply with Jordan’s investigation.
We want to be careful not to overstate the problem here. Thousands of FBI agents are not entrapping unwitting Catholics all across the country. The FBI’s acting assistant director of congressional affairs, Christopher Dunham, insisted, “The FBI is not anti-Catholic in any way, shape, or form, and does not target people of any faith because of their religious beliefs.” That’s probably at least largely true, and there are no doubt many Catholics throughout the ranks of the FBI.
Yet if the FBI and others are wondering why people distrust the government and a handful of bad apples are motivated to violence, they might try a little introspection about the weaponization of government, including the FBI.
Update: Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy believes Jim Jordan may be stretching the evidence too far and drawing unfair conclusions. “Jordan’s investigation must not devolve into a red-meat exercise for a Trump base bent on settling scores with feds cast by their man as his chief tormentors,” McCarthy argues. “If Jordan’s got proof that the FBI is using undercover agents to infiltrate Catholic groups, he should tell us what it is — his letter, for all the hoopla about it, does no such thing.”