When news broke that the FBI's Richmond field office targeted Catholic Latin mass enthusiasts as domestic terrorists and attempted to launch a full-scale investigation against them, the FBI was quick to shut the garbage down, suggesting it a rogue operation that wasn't up to their tough standards.

Well, maybe not so much.

Congressional investigators now say other field offices were involved, suggesting some kind of national operation -- and they weren't anywhere near Richmond, Virginia.

According to Fox News:

House Republicans say FBI documents they've obtained prove that several field offices contributed to a memo that targeted traditionalist Catholics as "potential terrorists," conflicting with recent sworn testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Republican leadership on the House Judiciary Committee revealed in a letter sent to Wray on Wednesday that said the document they subpoenaed from the agency details how "both FBI Portland and FBI Los Angeles field offices were involved in or contributed to the creation of FBI’s assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists."

"This new information suggests that the FBI’s use of its law enforcement capabilities to intrude on American’s First Amendment rights is more widespread than initially suspected," Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and co-chair Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote in the letter.

The information also contradicts Wray's congressional testimony that the FBI's anti-Catholic initiative was "a single product by a single field office."

 

The FBI Richmond internal memo, titled "Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities," was leaked in January and drew instant criticism from Republicans.

What a strange development.

Doesn't the Portland FBI field office have better things to do than investigate traditionalist Catholics as the world's scariest terrorist threat? Don't they have an antifa investigation or two to pursue, given that not too long ago, antifa burned down a federal courthouse? Nobody punished on that one -- and apparently nobody looking, either. The FBI had Catholics to pursue, and Portland doesn't even have the ethnic composition to be much of a Catholic town with Catholics in it at all.

And Los Angeles? Why the wokesterism there? Have these people ever been to a Los Angeles Latin Mass, as I have? It's a schlubby little affair, conducted in a worn-out dusty cathedral, with women in 'modest' dress with lace veils with devoted husbands and multiple kids, advertised only by word of mouth, because the wokesterly Catholic Church hates these things, too. I've been to one, based on the request of new Catholics I sponsored, who wanted to see what such a Mass was like. It would be the last place I'd go hunting for terrorists.

It's just bizarre that the Los Angeles and Portland field offices were involved in this hunt for Catholics, too.

Anybody punished for this obvious violation of the First Amendment? Not that we have heard of.

FBI Director Christopher Wray's office has argued that he spoke truthfully to Congress when he assured that this was solely the doing of the Richmond office and it only covered all those dangerous nests of Catholic terrorists in the Richmond area. Maybe so, but that would be a technicality. The weirdness of Los Angeles and Portland also being involved, even if Wray's office is technically truthful that this was Richmond's doing alone, is odd stuff.  Was something in the air that so many offices spontaneously decided that Catholics were the big threat to national security they should be investing FBI resources on?

I actually wonder if it was a case of wokester whataboutism, given that real anti-terror resources probably needed to be deployed, in the Los Angeles area at least, against Islamist terrorists. With that the case, could it have been that the bureau was afraid of being accused of DEI violations for targeting Islamists who hate America enough wish it another 9/11, so to appear impartial, they falsely lumped Catholics in with Islamists in their list of broad terror threats, to show that 'everybody does it"? It may be that wokesterism put Catholics in the crosshairs to cover the FBI's DEI keister.

What we learn from this is that Congress is less that Wray lied than why these offices were involved at all. They ought to be digging deeper into why such a strange confluence of field offices decided to come together to target such a phony threat to national security that would be sure to lead nowhere other than maybe a false prosecution or two to keep the numbers up, and why the FBI has such tremendous resources that it can get away with this farce -- with no consequences to itself.

Screen shot from CNBC video, via YouTube