Civil Rights Attorney Blasts FBI For Targeting Catholics
The Justice Department has been busy expanding its warning signs for possible domestic extremism to include a wide array of predominantly conservative Americans — from concerned parents to social media commenters who use words like “based.”
Perhaps the most alarming evidence of this trend came in the form of a memo leaked by a whistleblower that accused practicing Catholics of harboring “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist” views.
Of course, President Joe Biden claims to be a Catholic, but his particular brand of religion is likely not the traditional belief system that has reportedly been targeted by the FBI.
Although Attorney General Merrick Garland tried to distance himself from the memo during a subsequent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the damage appeared to have already been done.
A letter written by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to FBI Director Christopher Wray detailed the use of an undercover agent to spy on “mainline Catholic parishes” suspected of engaging in “radicalization.”
For his part, civil rights attorney Leo Terrell took aim at the bureau for ever taking such steps in the first place.
“God and religion are a threat to the extreme left,” he said during a recent Fox News Channel interview. “This is scary, people need to understand this.”
The fact that agents investigated practicing Catholics without any evidence of a crime, Terrell argued, should be a wake-up call for all freedom-loving Americans.
“This is a war by the extreme left against religion,” he added. “The Constitution, the First Amendment — meaningless to the left. And to launch an investigation to try to infiltrate Catholic churches without any evidence of criminal activity, Americans need to understand that the far-left have weaponized the FBI. This is not the FBI I grew up with.”
As U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the chairman of the aforementioned House subcommittee, determined after subpoenaing FBI documents related to the January memo, the “chilling” investigation of traditional Catholics made use of “information derived from at least one undercover employee [and] sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development.’”
