House GOP Subpoenas FBI for Spying on Catholics
House GOP Subpoenas FBI for Spying on Catholics
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has issued a subpoena to the FBI for information on its agents’ clandestine activities in Catholic churches.
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has issued a subpoena to the FBI for information on its agents’ clandestine activities in Catholic churches.
Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray complaining about the agency’s lack of transparency since the leak last January of its internal report, known as the “Richmond document,” which categorized Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists. Jordan demanded full cooperation from Wray in turning over all relevant information without redactions.
He tweeted, “We now know the FBI … sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development,'” calling the news “chilling.”
His letter explains that “the FBI sought to enlist Catholic houses of worship as potential sources to monitor and report on their parishioners,” and argues that Americans “must be free to exercise their fundamental First Amendment rights without worrying that the FBI may have planted so-called ‘tripwire’ sources or other informants in their houses of worship.”
Jordan condemned the FBI, noting that its Richmond document was “reviewed and approved by two senior intelligence analysts and even the local Chief Division Counsel,” and wrote, “We know from whistleblowers that the FBI distributed this document to field offices across the country.” However, he admitted that no one outside the FBI knows how many agents infiltrated Catholic churches as a result.