This February, FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin revealed the existence of a memorandum within the Richmond, Va., field office that labeled Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. Last Monday, almost a full year after Seraphin’s disclosure, the House Judiciary Committee released a report, “The FBI’s Breach of Religious Freedom: The Weaponization of Law Enforcement Against Catholic Americans.”

Although the report details how the FBI “abused its counterterrorism tools” to target Catholics, there are some key issues that Capitol Hill – and most media – missed completely.

The FBI stigmatized a vast number of United States citizens as potential “Radical Traditional Catholic” (RTC) terrorists based upon the existence of one criminal case involving a man who self-described as an RTC. The FBI’s version of the facts, detailed in the Intelligence Note, describes a man who likely suffers from mental illness – hardly a cross-section of the Catholic population.

The most shocking aspect of this, one that largely escaped public attention, is that the FBI memo states the subject wasn’t even Catholic. He was taking catechism lessons in the hopes of becoming a baptized Catholic, but he was neither baptized nor confirmed.

The FBI never explained what “threat” the agency sought to “mitigate” by targeting Catholics. The Note offers no history or example of political violence associated with conservative Catholics who prefer Latin mass. It simply asserts, baselessly, that they pose a threat as potentially violent domestic terrorists.

Moreover, the FBI’s denigration of Catholics is not limited to Latin mass worshippers. Rather, the bureau appears to have issues with the Catholic faith in general. The Intelligence Note laments a purported “intelligence gap” when seeking to identify factors leading to violence, “which may include increased religiosity and/or adherence to extreme religious teachings.” Hence, the FBI literally claims that increasing one’s religiosity makes one a greater domestic terrorist threat.

The FBI never bothered to explain precisely what tenets of Catholicism or “extreme religious teachings” of the Catholic Church lead to political violence because, of course, there are none. Adherents of the faith who embrace extreme Catholic religiosity tend to become nuns in the streets of Calcutta.

The Judiciary Committee also fails to address the most fundamental issue posed by the FBI’s abuse of Catholics’ civil liberties. The FBI labeled an amorphous and impossibly ill-defined faith community as potential terrorists without pointing to a single historical or current example of a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” associated with any form of political violence, the preeminent and unnegotiable element required by the domestic terrorism statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2331.

No political violence = No domestic terrorism. Contrast this to the Black Lives Matter riots that engulfed the United States in the summer of 2020. Our Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit to force the FBI to provide evidence that the government conducted any investigation of BLM during that season of political violence and domestic terrorism. To date, the bureau has produced no such evidence.

In the pre-woke FBI, it took more than simply labeling a U.S. citizen as a potential domestic terrorist to open an investigation. Back then, the bureau was required first to show that an individual sought to engage in criminally violent or life-threatening acts to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government.

Today’s FBI, however, blissfully bypasses the most fundamental elements of the domestic terrorism violation when it comes to labeling large swaths of peaceful, law-abiding citizens (non-Catholics as well as Catholics) as potential terrorists. According to the Judiciary Committee report, the FBI’s targets are Americans who dare hold such disfavored political viewpoints as “pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction.”

Perhaps the clearest indication that the FBI itself knows it has ventured into constitutionally impermissible territory is its flippant use of a “First Amendment Caveat.” The wordy exercise in psychological projection is worth reading in full, especially as this caveat is relied upon in similar exercises elsewhere:

Potential criminality exhibited by certain members of a group referenced herein does not negate nor is it a comment on the constitutional rights of the group itself or its members to exercise their rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The FBI does not investigate, collect, or maintain information on U.S. persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment.

Obviously, the First Amendment implications of labeling an entire mainstream religious group are top of mind for in-house FBI lawyers. That should have been a cause for pause as opposed to further activity and laughable legalese. Also, notice the looseness of the term “potential criminality.” The bureau now needs not rely on actual evidence of past criminality to determine threat levels. The standard now appears to be speech alone.

As the FBI continues to invent a new alphabet soup of terminological groupings, such as Radical Traditional Catholics (RTC) and Racially Motivated Violent Extremist (RMVE), and open investigations for activities such as sporting Gadsden or Betsy Ross flags, the agency has reached apex weaponization as an ideological entity as opposed to a crime-fighting one.

 

Memo Exposes FBI’s Weaponized Modus Operandi

Today’s FBI routinely opens domestic terrorism investigations targeting people who have never demonstrated any propensity toward political violence.

These civil liberty violations occur not merely because of inept or corrupt FBI leadership. Ideologically weaponized FBI employees at all levels gravitate toward FBI units, such as domestic terrorism squads, that allow them to indulge their political ideology. Working drugs or health care fraud apparently lacks that satisfying special sauce that working politically charged violations bring for the ideological agent. To such weaponized employees, political dissent in and of itself constitutes a threat to their preferred social order.

This is why virtually all FACE Act prosecutions target pro-lifers, while countless attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and Catholic churches go uninvestigated.

This is why the FBI pointed long arms at Mark Houck’s terrified children.

This is why geriatric grandmothers who committed misdemeanor trespass on Jan. 6 have taken FBI investigative priority over child predators and spies.

This is why a Republican Internet prankster was sentenced to seven months in prison (the case is now on appeal) for posting a social media meme joking that Democrat votes might be texted while a Democrat who posted the identical meme suggesting Republican votes might be texted was never bothered by law enforcement.

R&I~Smit