The FBI’s own internal presentation listed “conservative family values/roles” among the core beliefs of a
“radical-traditionalist” Catholic. The investigation found nothing. On Aug. 28 the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group released its report on the 2023 Richmond “Catholic memo.” Joe walks through what the document actually says, where the investigation started, and what it did not find. Three years after the Richmond memo leaked, the Justice Department has put its findings in writing: a “grave failure” of the FBI Richmond Field Office, “a clear abuse of power” in the words of Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, and “unacceptable” in the words of FBI Director Kash Patel. The report traces the memo to a single 2020 investigation of one man in Virginia who wrote violent and racially motivated posts online, the SSPX chapel he later attended, and a second priest connected to the breakaway group calling itself the SSPX Resistance. Subsequent research turned up only two additional cases. The FBI’s own counterterrorism division found no significant linkage between violent extremists and traditional Catholics, and the report states plainly that agents found nothing linking Catholics to domestic extremism. The personnel who produced the memo have been terminated. Also on today’s show: a Catholic organization founded by the U.S. bishops, the Jesuits and the Maryknoll Missionaries canceled its keynote speaker after Chinese government officials asked it to – on American soil. And, masked settlers attack an NBC News crew and a displaced Palestinian woman in the West Bank.
