Traditional Catholics were deemed domestic terrorists under the Biden Administration. Newly released Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records reveal the true extent of the surveillance measures.
In 2023, a whistleblower notified the public that the government was spying on Catholic Churches and patrons who held pro-life views. The whistleblower provided an internal document now known as the Richmond memo, officially titled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.” The internal memo that was distributed to 1,000 FBI agents across the nation deemed “radical-traditionalist Catholics” (RTCs) racially or ethnically motivated extremists.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray attempted to retract the memo. Wray claimed that the slander was limited to one memo. As Wray said under oath: The only involvement of the two other field offices was the Richmond authors of the product included two sentences or something thereabouts referencing each of these other offices’ cases, and they sent those sentences about the other offices’ cases to them, not the whole product, and asked them, ‘hey, did we describe your case right?’ That’s all the other offices had. So it was a single field office’s product, and I stand by that. The Department of Justice’s Inspector General reviewed the letter when it was first leaked and determined that there was no religious bias or malicious intent.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, continued to look into the matter. On June 2, 2025, he sent a seven-page letter to FBI Director Kash Patel to say that his letters to former FBI Director Wray went unanswered and new findings warranted reopening the investigation. Furthermore, Grassley found that intelligence agencies “produced at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used anti-Catholic terminology and relied on information from the radical far-left Southern Poverty Law Center.” The extent of spying and internal dialogue regarding Catholics as extremists was far deeper than “two sentences” in one memo. The second of 13 memos was released to the entire FBI department, urging them to continue monitoring Catholics.
The FBI tracked increases and decreases in mass attendance at traditionalist Catholic churches. They were instructed to monitor the social media accounts of Catholics as a form of “threat mitigation.” The parishioner sitting beside you in the pew could have been a Biden FBI agent in disguise. This was an agency-wide effort that the past administration attempted to hide. The FBI interviewed parishioners and clergy members to instill suspicion and fear in the community.
The First Amendment of the US Constitution grants Americans the right to exercise their religious beliefs. It is hard to believe that the Department of Justice’s Inspector General failed to find evidence of malicious intent when a specific religious group was clearly discriminated against and targeted for their faith. Wray lied under oath and Biden turned on his own faux faith to target anyone who could potentially stand in the way of his pro-abortion stance.
