Under guise of fighting anti-Catholic bias, Kash Patel fires FBI analysts who kept us safe

The employees who tracked a violent extremist are now paying the price for a right-wing myth

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Four FBI intelligence analysts as well as a supervisory analyst were fired by Director Kash Patel on Friday on the grounds that they wrote up a memo that conservatives insisted targeted Catholics.

FBI Director Kash Patel (screenshot via YouTube)

That memo was one of more eye-popping examples included in a report by Trump’s sham “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.” It was first mentioned in a detailed 2023 report by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee—titled “The FBI’s breach of religious freedom: The weaponization of law enforcement against Catholic Americans”—which said the analysts 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.’”

But a closer look at what those analysts actually did shows that religious animus had nothing to do with this. They were just trying to protect the country from a potential attack.

Here’s what happened, according to former Department of Justice Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.

Beginning in 2019, the FBI began tracking a(n unnamed) man who advocated civil war and the assassination of politicians… and then purchased semi-automatic weapons and ammo. He was then arrested for other reasons, but in jail, his online threats grew even worse. He would make phone calls to family members during which he talked about the need to “build guns, explosives, and other forms of weaponry and store them in [his] room without fear of the law finding out about it.” He also said he needed to “make total war against the Satanic occultist government and the Zionist devil worshiping bankers who control it.”

He completed his sentence in June of 2021, and once he was released, there was reason to believe this guy wanted to put his violent rhetoric into action—specifically against “pro-choice, Jewish, and LGBTQ individuals.”

Because of his status as a convicted felon and due to his plea agreement, however, he couldn’t actually purchase any weapons to carry out his planned attacks. But he did have social media accounts in which he posted Nazi symbols, talked about killing police officers, “ganging up on and beating” racial/religious minorities, carry out a mass shooting as a “school for special needs children,” etc.

In early 2022, the guy began attending a church that’s not formally affiliated with the Catholic Church but pushed “traditional Catholic theology and liturgy.” He also described himself on social media as “‘Fascist and Catholic’ and a ‘[radical-traditional (rad-trad)] Catholic clerical fascist.’” Even worse, it appeared that he was recruiting members in that church to carry out an attack.

He even made comments to members of the church saying he was going to commit violence and suggested he was building a pressure cooker bomb. (These members were not on board with any of this.)

At that point, the FBI office in Richmond send an undercover agent to the church to interact with the man and find out how serious these threats were. The answer? Very. It led the office to declare the man to be their “highest priority domestic terrorism subject.”

The man kept taking steps indicating he was going to kill people. He even purchased equipment that would let him lock the doors of commercial buildings, preventing hostages from exiting. He also bought a truck and posted a video on social media saying that was his final step before the attack.

On November 12, 2022, investigators obtained a search warrant for his home and found all kinds of disturbing stuff: ammo, a 3D printer, lock-picking devices, “multiple Molotov cocktail-type improvised incendiary devices.”

They felt like they had enough to work with here and arrested him. Crisis averted. (In June of 2023, the man was indicted in federal court and pleaded guilty.)

But part of building their case meant talking with people who may have communicated with him during his planning process. So FBI agents interviewed the church’s priest, choir director, and other members. It seemed that all of them knew exactly why the FBI wanted to speak to them.

It was that guy, wasn’t it?

They cited his “unusual” and “concerning” behavior and racism. The FBI considered reaching out to nearby churches just to let religious leaders know what potential warning signs to look out for, and to give them a way to reach out to the FBI if they saw anything suspicious.

The point is: The church wasn’t the problem. It was just that one guy.

When two FBI analysts—both with decades of experience—began drafting a memo about all this (called a Domain Analysis), noting potential areas of concern for the future, one possibility was the link between the man’s extremism and his faith. But even that possibility was dismissed by the very same analyst, who pointed out that this guy was already on the FBI’s radar before he ever joined this church.

Still, if he was recruiting members for an assault through this church, perhaps there was reason to investigate further—if for no other reason than to help churches like theirs identify potential threats in the future.

Why did their memo include language like “rad-trad Catholic clerical fascist” and “radical-traditionalist Catholic”? Both analysts said those were the words the man himself used and that phrasing was common in his corner of the internet. They never defined it, though, which became an issue later on.

In fact, when the analysts did more research, they learned there were two other men on the FBI’s radar—through their offices in Portland and Milwaukee—who had similar extremist ideologies and a connection to the same kind of church. That’s what led to the publication of a report suggesting the link.

That report even included a legal caveat saying they were not infringing upon anyone’s First Amendment freedoms to practice their faith and they weren’t monitoring anyone in this church solely because of their religious beliefs:

Potential criminality exhibited by certain members of a group referenced herein does not negate nor is it a comment on the constitutional rights of the group itself or its members to exercise their rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The FBI does not investigate, collect, or maintain information on U.S. persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment.

The analysts hoped to create a different, more simplified, version of the report that could be shared with others within the FBI—beyond their own office—so they enlisted the help of additional analysts in drafting it.

But the FBI never got around to that.

The original draft report—never meant to be seen by the public—was somehow leaked to right-wing media outlets, and conservatives began running with the story that the FBI, under the Biden administration, was targeting Catholic churches.

That was a lie. There was no anti-Christian bias here. It was a valid documentation of a potentially dangerous phenomenon. It wasn’t even against the Catholic Church, but rather a potentially extremist sect calling itself Catholic.

To ignore that possibility would have been malpractice on the FBI’s part. But right-wing websites were quick to claim the FBI was targeting Catholics who preferred a “Traditional Latin Mass.” (That was one of many descriptors of those churches.) They were misinterpreting everything those analysts had said, but true to form, conservatives began spreading those lies to feed their claims of religious persecution.

When word about this leak got back to the FBI, then-director Christopher Wray rescinded the original document, saying it “failed to adhere to FBI standards.” The agency also “formally admonish[ed] the employees involved.” Former Attorney General Merrick Garland also said he was “appalled” by the memo, but he dismissed any claims that there was discrimination against Catholics.

Conservatives used those actions to insist the FBI was trying to cover up for the religious persecution they were trying to get away with... AND WOULD HAVE, if not for the whistleblower who shared the original document.

But as the Inspector General later explained, that wasn’t the case. Documents like these go through layers of editing and there was no evidence of any malicious intent against a religious group. Just because this memo didn’t meet expectations, it didn’t mean anyone did anything wrong.

The [FBI Inspection Division (or INSD)] report found that although there was no evidence of malicious intent or an improper purpose, the [Richmond Virginia Domain Perspective or DP] failed to adhere to analytic tradecraft standards and evinced errors in professional judgment, including that it lacked sufficient evidence or articulable support for a relationship between [Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists or RMVEs] and so-called [Radical Traditionalist Catholic or RTC] ideology; incorrectly conflated the subjects’ religious views with their RMVE activities, creating the appearance that the FBI had inappropriately considered religious beliefs and affiliation as a basis for conducting investigative activity; and reflected a lack of training and awareness concerning proper domestic terrorism terminology. As a result, the INSD report concluded that the employees involved in drafting, editing, and reviewing the Richmond DP failed to adhere to FBI standards. The INSD report also examined the approval process for the Richmond DP, concluding that it was insufficient, and the circumstances surrounding its removal from FBI systems following the disclosure of the document into the public domain. Based on the results of the FBI’s Strategic Review, the FBI instituted a number of corrective actions, including enhancing approval requirements for intelligence products involving a sensitive investigative matter and formally admonishing the employees involved in the Richmond DP.

That wasn’t how everyone took it, though.

Wray, who was appointed by Trump during his first administration, said the memo “violated the agency’s policies on conducting investigations based on religious affiliation,” which was a ridiculous reason to dismiss a memo that necessitated the mention of a guy’s religious affiliation.

Whether or not you agree with the FBI’s assessment on the memo, though, it appeared that they handled it all internally. The report never should have seen the light of day for reasons they explained and the analysts were, fairly or not, admonished. That sounds like the government working as it should.

It didn’t matter to right-wing propagandists. They ran with the lie, as they so often do. The GOP-led Judiciary Committee, run by Rep. Jim Jordan, said in its report that this proved the “FBI abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists”: “The documents received pursuant to the Committee’s subpoena show that the FBI singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists.”

That’s not accurate.

But now, Republicans have successfully run everyone involved in this investigation out of the FBI.

Several FBI analysts tied to the creation of a 2023 memo warning of a potential threat from Catholic “violent extremists” were fired Friday, according to their lawyer, the latest wave of terminations under the leadership of its director Kash Patel.

The fired employees included four intelligence analysts and a supervisory analyst. The FBI declined to comment.

“This action is manifestly unjust, completely unsupported by the facts, and subverts standard FBI policy and procedure,” their lawyer, David Laufman, said in a statement. “These individuals deserved far better for the exceptional and faithful public service they rendered to protect our country.”

The lawyer, of course, is correct. There’s no indication of any anti-religious bigotry on the part of the analysts. They successfully prevented a domestic terrorist attack, and this is the reward they get. Their only mistake, if anything, involved the technical elements of producing a report based on their findings. Substantively, however, they didn’t do anything wrong.

The Trump administration is so dead-set on pretending they’re saving the country that they’re quite literally firing the very people who keep the country safe.

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