Democrats were so desperate to find white supremacist violence during the Biden administration that they spied on two innocent priests. Then, when the investigation found nothing and was exposed, Democrats refused to hold the perpetrators accountable until President Donald Trump fired them this summer.
Those are among the findings of the Richmond Domain Perspective Report released by the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group. They show why the investigation into the weaponization of government was necessary.
In the wake of Jan. 6, President Joe Biden and other Democrats were eager or desperate to portray all political opposition to their policy agenda as illegitimate extremism. That is why Biden repeatedly claimed absurdly that white supremacy was the biggest domestic danger facing the country. In September 2022, for example, he said “domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy is the greatest terrorist threat to our homeland today.” At Howard University the following May, he called white supremacy “the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.”
The problem for Democrats was finding actual evidence of political violence to fit their preferred narrative. So the FBI’s Richmond Field Office went looking and then made it up.
They began with a legitimate target. The man identified in the report as Target 1 had assaulted police officers, vandalized vehicles, and posted racist and violent material online. He was the kind of person the FBI should investigate.
But Target 1 had attended a few catechism classes at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel, affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X. That thin connection became the FBI’s opening into condemning an entire religion. One priest even told agents that Target 1 was not Catholic, was not a church member, and had “crazy views about race” that would have precluded his membership. That should have ended the Catholic angle. Instead, it expanded it.
Agents then opened assessments into that priest and another, collecting their travel and credit card information and searching their phones. But despite their best efforts, the FBI found no national security threat and no federal violation involving either man.
Still, the Richmond office pressed ahead.
An internal presentation on “Traditionalist Catholicism” identified the Traditional Latin Mass and “conservative family values/roles” as parts of a core ideology. Other materials associated alleged radicalism with opposition to abortion, immigration, affirmative action, and LGBT policies. The Richmond memo then proposed cultivating sources in Catholic churches as “tripwires” for suspicious activity.
This was political and religious profiling dressed up as counterterrorism. Views held by millions of peaceful Americans were transformed into indicators of extremism because analysts were determined to find a connection that their research could not establish.
When the memo leaked in February 2023, an embarrassed FBI headquarters quickly withdrew it. Internal reviewers concluded that the Richmond office had effectively asserted that radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology was violent without evidence.
Yet the bureaucracy protected its own. More than a month after the memo was pulled, one analyst wrote that he had spent the day “tinkering” with a revised version. Richmond leaders defended the employees involved. They received positive performance evaluations, including ratings of “Exemplary,” despite an internal review that found failures of judgment and FBI standards.
Only after Trump returned to office did real accountability arrive. The Justice Department says the FBI personnel involved in producing the memo have now been fired.
A NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE WOULD BE AN IMPORTANT TRUMP LEGACY
That is why the Weaponization Working Group matters. Restoring trust in federal law enforcement requires more than promising that abuses will not happen again. It requires exposing how they happened, releasing records, identifying institutional failures, and holding people responsible.
The Richmond memo was not merely a bad document. It was what happens when political narratives become law enforcement priorities and constitutional rights become obstacles to proving them. The only way to restore public trust is to uncover the truth and fire those who abused their office.