The FBI’s Catholic Controversy Just Got Bigger

Wooden church pews with stained glass light on the aisle — Photo: njaj / Shutterstock

The Trump Justice Department just confirmed what conservative Catholics have said for three years: the FBI treated their faith like a warning sign for domestic terrorism.

Story Snapshot

A DOJ task force says Biden-era agencies showed anti-Christian bias in prosecutions, policies, and practices across 17 federal agencies.
The report follows the 2023 FBI Richmond memo that labeled “radical traditionalist Catholics” as possible violent extremists.
FBI Director Kash Patel fired five analysts tied to the memo, according to the New York Times.
A 2024 DOJ Inspector General review found no proof of a direct order to target Catholics, though it did fault the memo’s sloppy tradecraft.

DOJ Task Force Details Widespread Bias

The Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias released its report on April 30, 2026, acting under Executive Order 14202. The task force said Biden administration prosecutions, policies, and practices showed anti-Christian bias “throughout the federal government,” pulling findings from 17 agencies. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called it proof of a “systematic culture” of bias against Christians during the Biden years.

The report runs hundreds of pages and covers more than just the FBI. It touches law enforcement, education policy, tax rules, and healthcare, according to lawmakers who reviewed it. For years, conservative Christians said federal agencies treated their beliefs as a threat instead of protecting their right to practice them freely. This report gives that complaint an official government stamp.

The Richmond Memo That Started It All

The centerpiece of this fight is a January 2023 FBI Richmond Field Office memo. It labeled “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potential domestic violent extremists and suggested the FBI could use churches as “threat mitigation” sites, meaning agents floated infiltrating Catholic parishes. The memo tied traditional Catholic beliefs to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ” ideology, according to internal FBI records. It named two Catholic priests as part of the investigation.

A House Judiciary Committee report found this memo was not a one-time mistake. Despite testimony from former FBI Director Christopher Wray suggesting otherwise, investigators say the bureau produced at least 13 additional documents using similar anti-Catholic language. Senator Chuck Grassley’s oversight work backed this up, finding the bias reached further than Biden-era officials had admitted.

FBI Firings Follow Years of Pressure

The fallout has already cost people their jobs. FBI Director Kash Patel fired at least five analysts connected to the Richmond memo, multiple sources told the New York Times. The 11-page document, once buried in internal files, became a rallying point for Republicans who say it proves the bureau treated ordinary Catholics like criminal suspects simply for holding traditional beliefs. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton demanded answers when the memo first surfaced, calling out the FBI for singling out “radical-traditionalist” Catholics by name.

Not every investigator agrees on how bad the intent was. The DOJ Inspector General’s 2024 review said it found no evidence that anyone ordered analysts to link Catholics to a specific religion or political group, and no evidence of discriminatory comments in their messages. Still, the same review said the memo “failed to adhere to analytic tradecraft standards” and created “the appearance” that religious beliefs were improperly used as grounds for investigation. In other words, investigators couldn’t prove a top-down order, but they also couldn’t call it clean.

That distinction matters, but it doesn’t erase the bigger picture. Whether it came from a direct order or a culture of sloppy, biased assumptions, the result was the same: faithful Catholics got flagged as potential extremists by their own government. The new task force report says this wasn’t isolated to one field office memo, but part of a wider pattern across federal agencies during the Biden years. For conservatives who’ve long distrusted how Washington views traditional faith, this report reads less like news and more like vindication.