FBI Director Christopher Wray has forfeited all grounds for confidence in his integrity. He was caught this week in yet another falsehood, this time about an infamous memo targeting “traditionalist” Catholics, which appears to mean those who hew to orthodox doctrines and unmodernized liturgies. Wray must be made to clean up his act or clean out his office.
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The memo, produced by the FBI’s Richmond field office, said the bureau should particularly monitor “traditionalist Catholic” people, such as those who prefer the Latin Mass, as potential purveyors of “violent extremis[m]” who may need to be targeted for “threat mitigation.” It assumed traditionalist Catholics are particularly prone to becoming domestic terrorists. This is false and defamatory, and the specter of law enforcement targeting a faith community raises serious First Amendment concerns.
FBI MEMO TARGETING CATHOLIC GROUP WENT BEYONG RICHMOND OFFICE
In his July 12 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Wray insisted that the memo was merely “a single product by a single field office.” (See this video at 1:29:33.) He also said “that product did not result, as best as we can tell, in any investigative action as a result of it. None.” Asked specifically about redactions in the memo held by the committee, Wray dodged commenting on why they were necessary.
For more than half a year he promised to be more forthcoming with Congress about the whole situation as soon as an “internal” investigation was completed — as if it should take seven months to find out who wrote a single memo and why.
Well, once the Judiciary Committee was finally able to get past the redactions, it showed Wray was flagrantly misleading Congress on both major counts. It wasn’t only the FBI’s Richmond office that targeted traditional Catholics. Instead, that office “coordinated with” the FBI’s Portland office in preparing the assessment and, worse, was in touch with the FBI’s Los Angeles office, too, which initiated an investigation into a particular Catholic society there.
So it wasn’t just one office but three, and there was an “investigative action” contrary to Wray’s explicit denial. This information would have been readily available if Wray had not kept it redacted despite pleas from congressmen for transparency.
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If this topic had arisen for the first time at the hearing, perhaps Wray could claim he made an innocent error. But he arrived at the hearing knowing this topic had been a major flashpoint for months, and he said he’d taken a direct interest in ensuring that such religious targeting never happened again. His false assurances to the committee were, therefore, not merely inadvertent misstatements but unmitigated lies under oath.
This is far from the only example of the director misleading Congress or blocking its oversight efforts. He has repeatedly made the ludicrous claim that the FBI didn’t work to “censor” speech on social media platforms when a federal judge, citing incontrovertible evidence, ruled that it did. He has denied that the FBI targeted parents who spoke up at local school board meetings, but it actually opened at least 25 such investigations and then Wray failed to comply with subpoenas about them. He has resisted subpoenas relating to the Biden family, pretended an armed raid on the home of a peaceful anti-abortion protester was normal procedure, downplayed various abuses of surveillance tools, and repeatedly stonewalled senior Republican senators asking valid questions based on whistleblower reports of FBI misdeeds.
Wray consistently acts as though the purpose of his job is to serve the FBI, up to and including defending or concealing indefensible FBI behavior. His job is to serve, and to have the FBI serve, the public and its duly enacted laws. This should mean firing all FBI staff who instead serve themselves and their ideological allies.
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For several years, Wray’s shiftiness has been unseemly. The latest evidence of his dishonesty should lead to his rapid reform or his disgrace.
