SW News: The US House Judiciary Committee asserted on Wednesday that it had discovered proof of multiple Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) field offices working together to coordinate an inquiry into traditionalist Catholics earlier this year.
In February of this year, a leaked memo from the FBI's Richmond, Virginia, field office was made public online. The memo was titled ‘Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.’ It mentioned looking into radical traditionalist Catholics who the agency suspected may have been associated with a far-right white nationalist movement.
The document received criticism from American bishops, attorneys general, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Over the past few months, senators and congressmen have questioned both Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray about the matter.
The legislators stated in a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray that information from the Los Angeles Field Office, as well as a "liaison contact" at the Portland Field Office, were both mentioned in a less censored version of the document that the panel got last month.
The letter, which was written by Jim Jordan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Mike Johnson, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, questioned Wray as to why he redacted this information in previous versions of the document he produced to the Committee.
The Republican-controlled committee has been leading an investigation into the FBI’s actions in Richmond. Jordan threatened to hold Wray in contempt last month if he did not provide copies of the records that had been subpoenaed but had been redacted. Jordan and Wray got into a fight over the issue during a contentious House Judiciary hearing last month, when the FBI director argued the letter was a "single product by a single field office."
The letter said that the newly produced version of the document clearly states that FBI Richmond coordinated with FBI Portland in preparing the assessment. Thus, it appears that both FBI Portland and FBI Los Angeles field offices were involved in the creation of the FBI’s assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists.