BY :   Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter 

The U.S. Department of Justice has called an FBI memo that sparked backlash for labeling “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” a national security threat a “grave failure,” as a new report shows an FBI field office kept working on the document even after it was ordered removed.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Weaponization Working Group released a report Thursday on the events surrounding the 2023 circulation of a memo from the FBI’s Richmond Field Office that warned about the threat posed by “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” and drew widespread outrage.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation is entrusted with the solemn responsibility of protecting the First Amendment rights of all Americans. History will rightly judge the Richmond Catholic Memo as a grave failure of the FBI Richmond Field Office to uphold that responsibility,” the report stated.

The document alleged that “the increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) in radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development.” The memo drew criticism for citing the far-left advocacy organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) when listing examples of “radical-traditionalist Catholic groups in the U.S.” The SPLC is known for branding organizations that oppose same-sex marriage as hate groups.

“[T]he individuals who developed the Richmond Domain Perspective are no longer with the Department, and our Working Group’s efforts to investigate weaponization under the previous Administration will continue,” U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

FBI Director Kash Patel said that “releasing information to the public about what occurred under the prior regime” is crucial for holding those responsible accountable.

“I want to thank the Weaponization Working Group for their partnership as well as Attorney General Todd Blanche for his leadership addressing these abuses and making sure they never happen again,” Patel said.

The report details what led to the FBI’s investigation of “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology,” and what followed the leak of the memo and the agency’s insistence that the document did not “meet the exacting standards of the FBI.” The FBI assured the public it quickly removed the document from FBI systems and conducted a “review of the basis for the document.”

However, the document remained available to FBI employees for 15 days after it was ordered deleted, and that one of its drafters kept working on it, the report explains. More than a month after it was ordered removed, an FBI Richmond staffer sent an email admitting to “tinkering” with the document and outlining a “few areas where we could tinker further.”

The FBI’s Inspection Division concluded that those responsible for the memo did not compile it with “malicious intent or an improper purpose,” but determined that they showed a lack of “professional judgment and failed to adhere to FBI standards.” It called for the drafters to “be admonished,” with the admonishment reflected in their performance ratings.

The Richmond Field Office disagreed with the Inspection Division’s findings, noting that the memo’s drafters received favorable performance reviews ranging from “exemplary” to “consistent.” The reviews explicitly mentioned the employees’ work on the memo, praising one of them for overseeing “an extremely difficult threat during the review period, which became increasingly so following the leak of one of the products related to the threat [the employee] resided over.”

The memo stemmed from a probe into an individual referred to as “Target 1,” who spent several months in prison after slashing the tires of cars in his neighborhood that were “displaying political symbols he opposed” and assaulting law enforcement officers who tried to intervene. According to the report, the “violent and racially-motivated ideology” of “Target 1,” made clear in his social media posts, caught the FBI’s attention.

While in prison, “Target 1” wrote a letter to a relative expressing his belief that “government is evil” and that “all that needs to be done is for us to truly unite in Christ Jesus and make total war against the Satanic occultists Government.” He expressed specific concern about “Jews, Liberals, communists, degenerates, Zionists, progressives, capitalists, globalists, and green-party PETA-type environmentalists.”

After his release from prison, “Target 1” sought to compile firearms, ammunition and Molotov cocktails, and expressed a desire to carry out a mass shooting at a school for children with special needs. Before he was sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison for possession of destructive devices, the FBI learned of his attendance at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel.

As the report explains, Our Lady of Fatima Chapel is affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X, which was established based on “opposition to changes in the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council” and has since been declared in schism with the Roman Catholic Church. After discovering the attendance of “Target 1” at Our Lady of Fatima in 2022, the FBI interviewed the priest there and conducted surveillance on another priest affiliated with “Priest 1.”

The Inspection Division’s report concluded that the memo “erroneously equated the ideology of domestic terrorism (DT) subjects who self-identified as ‘Radical Traditional Catholic’ (‘RTC’) with [RMVE] ideology, without sufficient support” and “‘erroneously conflated’ Target 1’s interest in religion with violent extremism activities and implied that RMVEs and ‘RTC’ ideology align without offering supporting evidence.”

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