By now we know the truth of the attempts of the corrupt FBI, under the traitor and apostate, Biden, to spy and infiltrate traditional Latin Mass parishes seeking damning information -- at least in their minds -- about being potential seedbeds of "domestic extremism" and "terrorism"...
And the former corrupt head of the FBI, C. Wray, lied under oath -- read perjury! -- that the infamous memo sent out from the Richmond, VA field office was isolated to that office.
It was not!
In fact, it was coordinated with numerous offices on the West Coast and other locations!
Now comes this article from the
"The FBI began surveilling a Catholic priest in 2023 after the clergyman refused to divulge details about a recently arrested parishioner who was converting to Catholicism and seeking spiritual guidance.
The FBI’s Richmond Field Office, the same branch responsible for producing an anti-Catholic memo that was quickly retracted, tracked the priest’s movements and coordinated with several other FBI offices and a foreign law enforcement agency to gather intelligence on the clergyman and his priestly organization, according to a new House Judiciary Committee report obtained by National Review.
“This new information demonstrates that the FBI not only used its federal law enforcement resources to surveil certain Catholic Americans, but it also used these resources to investigate a clergy member,” the report asserts.
“From information made available to the Committee, there appeared to be no legitimate law-enforcement purpose for investigating this priest. 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 FBI declined to comment.
On January 4, 2023, an FBI employee from the Richmond office told colleagues about how the priest “became very uncomfortable and started incoherently shuttering” when the agents began asking him specific questions about one of his parishioners, including whether the man, who had recently been arrested, had “desires and plans to commit violence.” The priest responded by insisting that he had to speak with the Church hierarchy and its attorneys before speaking further with the FBI.
It’s unclear why the parishioner initially attracted the FBI’s attention. The report does not include any information about the parishioner’s criminal history.
The FBI agent asserted that priest-penitent privilege did not apply because the subject of the FBI’s investigation had yet to be baptized and had not finished the conversion process.
The priest did not to speak with the FBI further and continued to visit the subject in prison. Catholic priests regularly visit prisons to offer support and conduct ministry for incarcerated individuals.
Two days later, Richmond field office employees exchanged emails with Louisville colleagues about their attempt to interview the priest and planned investigation into him. It is unclear what role the Louisville field office played in the investigation beyond corresponding about what steps to take.
FBI Richmond employees quickly began examining the priest’s ordination history and affiliation with the Society of Saint Pius X, a traditionalist priestly fraternity that holds an irregular canonical status with the Catholic Church. SSPX bishops were excommunicated in 1988 but the order was lifted in 2009. SSPX remains outside of full communion with the Vatican.
The Judiciary Committee documents show the FBI Richmond office sought to work with Louisville and London law enforcement to gather more intelligence about SSPX and the priest. FBI Richmond employees were aware of the priest’s plans to attend a video conference in the U.K. and wanted to plan a meeting with London police’s counterterrorism division to see if they had more information about SSPX and the priest. Individuals from the FBI’s counterterrorism division were also brought into the loop to help coordinate investigative steps and potentially learn more from U.K. police about SSPX’s recruitment practices.
Emails between FBI Richmond, Louisville, and counterterrorism staff indicate the agents were tracking the priest’s movements and had access to his credit card information during a trip he took to Canada ahead of the U.K. conference in January 2023. The Richmond field office received approval on a foreign dissemination request from the counterterrorism division on January 12 in order to move forward with the meeting.
The foreign dissemination request is a document outlining the reasons why FBI Richmond sought information from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command. Richmond employees and the FBI’s London counterparts appeared to schedule a call for January 19, 2023, the day before the priest’s trip to the U.K.
The priest described in the new congressional report is also mentioned in the Richmond field office’s infamous anti-Catholic memo issued in January 2023. The Richmond memo likened traditionalist Catholics to violent extremists and was quickly retracted in February 2023 after widespread backlash. Ever since, the FBI has done damage control and cast the document as an isolated product developed by one office, rather than a reflection of a broader pattern.
The Judiciary Committee previously published a report on the memo’s development and found it was based on a single investigation. Many FBI analysts involved with the memo had no idea what it meant to be a “radical-traditional” Catholic, despite the memo’s warnings about such ideology.
FBI Richmond’s memo was largely based on left-wing media articles slandering Catholics and their pro-life views. Some of the articles include notations from an anti-Catholic employee at the Richmond office, the latest House Judiciary Committee report reveals. Additionally, the Richmond memo relied on information from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a progressive smear organization that regularly maligns conservative organizations as “extremist.”
FBI director Kash Patel has produced a trove of records to House and Senate investigators related to the FBI’s anti-Catholic activities. Patel promised to do so at his confirmation hearing in January after the FBI stonewalled Republican lawmakers under former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s leadership.
Earlier this year, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) released documents indicating the FBI’s targeting of traditionalist Catholics was much more widespread than originally thought, contradicting Wray’s congressional testimony about the matter. Grassley’s records demonstrated that the FBI produced over a dozen documents and five attachments with anti-Catholic terminology in them. The FBI was planning on producing a second memo similar to the Richmond one until the public outcry, Grassley disclosed.
Grassley’s findings are consistent with the House Judiciary Committee’s most recent report. The House panel found that FBI headquarters gave tacit approval for the Richmond memo by agreeing to develop an agency wide document that would have maligned traditional Catholics nationwide.
Although FBI headquarters publicly distanced itself from the Richmond memo, the agency was aware of its development and employees from headquarters communicated with Richmond counterparts about its contents.
“The FBI never acknowledged, until Director Patel produced documents to the Committee, that Director Wray’s Headquarters tacitly approved of the content in the Richmond memorandum by agreeing to develop an external product that would have denigrated Catholic Americans and unfairly characterized them as potential terrorists,” the report reads.
The Judiciary Committee also confirmed Grassley’s discovery about the amount of anti-Catholic terminology in the FBI’s internal documents. Catholic policy experts have condemned the FBI’s behavior and argued it poses a threat to religious liberty."
End of very disturbing article...
Note: the author of this story, like many religion writers, know very little about the Catholic Faith and church matters as is evidenced by his remarks concerning the SSPX!
I do hope you were able to pick out his errors!
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