The FBI Richmond office showed a “misplaced reliance” on the Southern Poverty Law Center in its analysis, per a report from the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.
The FBI has fired the analyst behind the controversial memo on "radical traditionalist Catholic ideology." The memo, inspired by information pulled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has since been withdrawn after it was drafted in 2023 under the Biden administration.
The so-called "Richmond memo" was drafted in the FBI's Richmond field office and has drawn criticism from the Trump administration. The report on the memo said that the FBI Richmond office showed a "misplaced reliance" on the Southern Poverty Law Center in its analysis, as well as "the religious affiliation of a single law enforcement target who happened to identify himself as a 'radical traditional Catholic,'" a report from the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias stated.
The SPLC has now been indicted in a wide-ranging fraud investigation, as it was revealed that the leftist organization paid members of extremist groups, according to an investigation from the DOJ.
The firing of the analyst was first reported by MS NOW. The memo was officially titled, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities."
It claimed that white supremacists, as well as other racially motivated actors, were attempting to recruit "radical traditionalist Catholics" and claimed that Catholic congregational gatherings could be used for intelligence gathering on extremist groups. The memo stemmed in part from a terrorism investigation into an extremist who joined a Catholic group that is not officially recognized by the Vatican.
A report from the House Republicans on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government said: "Under the guise of tackling the threat of domestic terrorism, the memorandum painted certain 'radical-traditionalist Catholics' (RTCs) as violent extremists and proposed opportunities for the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of 'threat mitigation.'"
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