Grassley says extent of FBI's targeting of 'radical traditionalist Catholics' greater than Biden officials claimed

Victor Nava
New York Post
Wed, 04 Jun 2025 19:49 UTC

© mariangarai – stock.adobe.com

The FBI memo described the purported overlaps between Catholics who oppose abortion rights and would-be terrorists as an opportunity for “threat mitigation” and “source development.”

Documents released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday appear to contradict former FBI Director Christopher Wray's claim that a controversial 2023 memo targeting "radical traditionalist Catholics" was a one-off and the work of a single bureau field office.

Extent of FBI's targeting of 'radical traditionalist Catholics' greater than Biden officials claimed, GOP senator reveals

The Biden-era FBI chief told House lawmakers in July of 2023 that the memo - which described the purported overlaps between Catholics who oppose abortion rights and would-be terrorists as an opportunity for "threat mitigation" and "source development" - was "a single product by a single field office."

However, the new FBI files obtained by Grassley show the bureau produced "at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used anti-Catholic terminology," as well as a second memo updating the FBI's Richmond Field Office's case against "radical" Catholics.

© ZUMAPRESS.com

FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on July 12, 2023.

"Director Wray's testimony was inaccurate not only because it failed to reveal the scope of the memo's production and dissemination, but also because it failed to reveal the existence of a second, draft product on the same topic intended for external distribution to the whole FBI," Grassley wrote in a letter to current FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday, demanding more documents.

The second FBI memo, released by Grassley, was also drafted by the FBI's Richmond office and repeated the "unfounded link between traditional Catholicism and violent extremism."

The backlash over the whistleblower disclosure of the initial memo led the Richmond office to never release the second version, according to the Iowa Republican.

However, the first "anti-Catholic Richmond Memo" was "widely distributed" in February 2023 to more than 1,000 FBI employees nationwide, according to Grassley's findings.

Comment:

"This raises serious concerns that FBI field offices may have relied on the Richmond memo, and placed groups in their areas of responsibility under suspicion based on reporting from the deeply-biased sources used in the memo," the senator informed Patel.

Additionally, the new documents reveal that Richmond FBI officials worked with the bureau's field offices in Louisville, Portland, and Milwaukee as they drafted the memo - further belying Wray's testimony.

The memo described the purported overlaps between Catholics who oppose abortion rights and would-be terrorists as an opportunity for "threat mitigation" and "source development." mariangarai - stock.adobe.com

Grassley and numerous conservatives and Catholics have criticized the FBI for largely relying on the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center's "hate group" classifications when putting together the memo.

"I continue to investigate the Richmond memo and the culture at the FBI that allowed it to be produced and approved," the senator informed Patel.

Comment: The Daily Signal adds:

The FBI Richmond office's notorious anti-Catholic memo reached more staff at the bureau than previously suggested, and some FBI staff were aghast to see it, according to new documents released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Tuesday.

The memo urged FBI agents to develop sources and surveil Catholic churches, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of "radical traditional Catholic hate groups." The SPLC's "hate map" plots conservative and Christian groups alongside Ku Klux Klan chapters. While the SPLC claims to be exposing "the infrastructure upholding white supremacy," critics say it uses the map to silence political opponents.

The FBI rushed to rescind the document after a whistleblower leaked it in February 2023. Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in July 2023 that the memo came from "a single product by a single field office, which, as soon as I found out about it, I was aghast and ordered it withdrawn and removed from FBI systems." Yet Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has claimed Wray may have lied under oath because multiple FBI offices were involved in creating the memo.

Grassley announced Tuesday that he found evidence that the memo had been disseminated to at least 1,000 FBI staff.

"Is anyone really asking for a product like this?" an FBI employee in Phoenix, Arizona, wrote in a February 2023 email responding to the memo. "Apparently we are at the behest of the SPLC..."

An FBI employee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, responded, "And yeah, our overreliance on the SPLC for hate designations is ... problematic."

In addition to these emails, Grassley found the FBI produced at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used the term "radical traditionalist Catholic" and relied on the SPLC.

[...]

In January 2024, The Daily Signal exclusively reported that SPLC President Margaret Huang bragged to donors that "we've had many agencies in the new Biden administration reaching out to solicit our expertise and our knowledge and information to help shape the policies that the new administration is adopting to counter the domestic terrorism threat."

Justice Department staff met with the SPLC shortly after the center added the parental rights nonprofit Moms for Liberty to its "hate map."

Kristen Clarke, who headed up the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, appears to have met with the SPLC.