CV NEWS FEED // The FBI’s response to a Catholic pro-life group’s requests for information related to FBI surveillance of Catholic churches has raised “serious concerns” that the government agency is targeting traditional Catholics, according to a recent news release.
Priests for Life stated in a May 16 news release that it requested information from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act, to which it received several heavily-redacted documents and a transcript of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Senate March 2023 testimony about a leaked internal FBI memo.
CatholicVote reported at the time that Garland was asked several questions about the leaked memo, which had suggested that traditional Catholics are potential domestic extremist threats that should be placed under surveillance. Merrick sidestepped all questions about anti-Catholic bias or surveillance of Catholic churches.
Priests for Life pointed out that the transcript of that testimony revealed that “the FBI was more concerned about ‘talking points’ to the media and how to spin the controversy than it was about fixing it.”
When asked how many informants there are in American Catholic churches, Merrick’s answers were “I don’t know” and “I don’t know the specific answer to your question.”
Priests for Life stated in the news release, “The attorney general doesn’t know!? The answer should be simple and unequivocal: None! As you can see, there is plenty of smoke here. But the cover-up is underway.”
The news release continued:
Indeed, the inspector general for the Justice Department recently issued a 10-page report to Congress, finding that the internal memo linking traditionalist Catholics to violent extremists “failed to adhere to FBI standards” but showed no evidence of “malicious intent.”
The report concluded that there was no “underlying policy direction” indicating a link.
Priests for Life said that the FBI’s actions are a “weaponization of the government to target conservative people” that must be stopped.
“We must and we will remain vigilant,” Priests for Life concluded. “And in the meantime, let’s vote out of office those who are weaponizing our government.”
