House Judiciary accuses Biden FBI of creating 'false narrative' regarding Catholic Americans

The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released an interim report that accuses the Biden administration's FBI of constructing a "false narrative" that depicted Catholic Americans as violent extremists.

The 51-page report comes after the FBI under former director Christopher Wray circulated an internal memo dubbed the Richmond Memorandum, created by the Richmond field office in 2023, which labeled traditional Catholics as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” 

The report accuses the bureau of creating a "manufactured narrative to insert federal law-enforcement agents into places of worship." The report includes revelations that the FBI allegedly spied on a priest because he refused to discuss a private conversation that he had with a parishioner. 

The Richmond field office reportedly investigated the priest’s background, monitored his travel plans, and looked into his credit card information after the priest allegedly claimed he would need to speak to his church and an attorney before discussing the conversation. The parishioner had recently been arrested.

“There appeared to be no legitimate law-enforcement purpose for investigating this priest,” the report determined. “This new information suggests that the FBI’s religious liberty abuses were more widespread than the FBI initially admitted and led the public to believe.”

The report also found that the Richmond memorandum was not an isolated incident as previously believed, and that terms like “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” were used in 13 documents between 2009 and 2023. 

"These new findings make it apparent that the FBI under President Biden and Director Wray withheld key information responsive to the Committee’s oversight," the report reads. "The Committee remains committed to conducting oversight of the Biden-Harris Administration’s abuse of federal law-enforcement resources against Catholic Americans."

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.