Has the FBI Been Weaponized Against Americans?

FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin testified before the House Judiciary Committee in February that a memorandum exists within the Richmond, Virginia, office of the FBI. He testified that the letter “labeled Catholics as potential domestic terrorists.” 4xThis week (Monday) the House Judiciary Committee released a report on the disclosure titled “The FBI’s Breach of Religious Freedom: The Weaponization of Law Enforcement Against Catholic Americans” as reported by Mike Howell at The Daily Signal.

The above-mentioned report “details how the FBI ‘abused its counterterrorism tools’ to target Catholics. But there are some key issues that Capitol Hill – and most media – missed completely.

The FBI stigmatized a vast number of United States citizens s potential “radical traditional Catholic” terrorists based upon the existence of one criminal case involving a man who self-described as such a Catholic. The FBI’s version of the facts, detailed in an “intelligence note,” describes a man who likely suffers from mental illness – hardly a cross section of the Catholic population.

The most shocking aspect of this, one that largely escaped public attention, is that the FBI memo states the subject wasn’t even Catholic. He was taking catechism lessons in the hopes of becoming a baptized Catholic, but he was neither baptized nor confirmed.

The FBI never explained what “threat” the agency sought to “mitigate” by targeting Catholics. The intelligence note offers no history or example of political violence associated with conservative Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. It simply asserts, baselessly, that they pose a threat as potentially violent domestic terrorists.

Moreover, the FBI’s denigration of Catholics is not limited to Latin Mass worshippers. Rather, the bureau appears to have issues with the Catholic faith in general. The “intelligence note” laments a purported “intelligence gap” when seeking to identify factors leading to violence, “which may include increased religiosity and/or adherence to extreme religious teachings.”

Hence, the FBI literally claims that increasing one’s religiosity makes one a greater domestic terrorist threat.

The FBI never bothered to explain precisely what tenets of Catholicism or “extreme religious teachings” of the Catholic Church [led] to political violence because, of course, there are none. Adherents of the faith who embrace extreme Catholic religiosity tend to become nuns in the streets of Calcutta.

The House Judiciary Committee also fails to address the most fundamental issue posed by the FBI’s abuse of Catholics’ civil liberties. The FBI labeled an amorphous and impossibly ill-defined faith community as potential terrorists without pointing to a single historical or current example of a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” associated with any form of political violence, the preeminent and unnegotiable element required by the domestic terrorism statute (18 U.S.C. § 2331).

No political violence = no domestic terrorism. Contrast this to the Black Lives Matter riots that engulfed the United States in the summer of 2020. The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit to force the FBI to provide evidence that the government conducted any investigation of BLM during that season of political violence and domestic terrorism. To date, the bureau has produced no such evidence.

Howell’s discussion admits that the FBI has not always been so cavalier about its duties. Before it became woke, the FBI “was required first to show that an individual sought to engage in criminally violent or life-threatening acts to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government.

Howell explained that today’s FBI “blissfully bypasses the most fundamental elements of the domestic terrorism violation when it comes to labeling large swaths of peaceful, law-abiding citizens (non-Catholics as well as Catholics) as potential terrorists.” The Judiciary Committee report claims that “the FBI’s targets are Americans who dare hold such disfavored political viewpoints as ‘pro-life, pro-family’ and ‘support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction.’” Howell continued:

Perhaps the clearest indication that the FBI itself knows it has ventured into constitutionally impermissible territory is its flippant use of a “First Amendment caveat.” The wordy exercise in psychological projection is worth reading in full, especially as this caveat is relied upon in similar exercises elsewhere:

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.

Obviously, the First Amendment implications of labeling an entire mainstream religious group are top of mind for in-house FBI lawyers. That should have been a cause for pause as opposed to further activity and laughable legalese.

Also, notice the looseness of the term “potential criminality.” The bureau now needs not rely on actual evidence of past criminality to determine threat levels. The standard now appears to be speech alone.

As the FBI continues to invent a new alphabet soup of terminological groupings, such as Radical Traditional Catholics and Racially Motivated Violent Extremist, and to open investigations for activities such as sporting Gadsden or Betsy Ross flags, the agency has reached apex weaponization as an ideological entity as opposed to a crime-fighting one.

Howell’s article continued the discussion about the FBI. It discusses the FBI’s weaponized modus operandi, which is to target “Americans who never have demonstrated any propensity toward political violence.” It is not just the “inept or corrupt FBI leadership targeting peaceful Americans, but it is also “Ideologically weaponized FBI employees at all levels” who “gravitate toward FBI units, such as domestic terrorism squads.” Together, they “indulge their political ideology” against Americans. In fact, almost “all FACE Act prosecutions target pro-lifers,” while failing to do anything about the “countless attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and Catholic churches….”

Howell asks an important question: why did Congress take “almost a year … to largely rearticulate what already had been known.” He continued, “The purpose of congressional oversight is to inform legislation and fix problems that have been identified.” Now that Congress has investigated and released its report, “what meaningful accountability measures are being taken to address these abuses? Who has been held accountable? What has changed at the FBI as a result? Howell concluded with these paragraphs:

Lawmakers have wasted enough time failing to prioritize deweaponization. Americans can’t afford to let them waste more time by failing to unite and make changes. And change is certainly what voters expected in 2022 when they flipped control of the House to the GOP.

            Congress already has the information it needs to begin deweaponization efforts immediately.                History will judge this Congress by that simple measure, not by its analysis and rhetoric                        regarding the problem.