Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and 19 GOP state attorneys general are looking into a matter regarding a memo from the FBI and DOJ that revealed the government law enforcement agencies are undergoing efforts to treat Catholics as “potential terrorists” – a situation that sounds shockingly similar to religious discrimination by the U.S. government.
In the memo, the FBI listed multiple potential Catholic hate/extremist groups, many of which are completely faith-based and have no violent history or intent.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and 19 GOP state attorneys general wrote a letter to the FBI and DOJ demanding that they:
“…desist from investigating and surveilling Americans who have done nothing more than exercise their natural and constitutional right to practice their religion in a manner of their choosing.” Miyares and his GOP colleagues also asked that the FBI and DOJ “reveal to the American public the extent to which they have engaged in such activities.”
The Biden administration and overzealous law enforcement agencies are no strangers to throwing around words such as “extremist” or “terrorist,” as they’ve even used these words along with FBI investigations into parents who spoke out against left-wing ideology at school board meetings within the previous few years following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The United States Constitution guarantees American citizens religious freedoms, and the FBI and DOJ have a long history of utilizing their powers to trample these American rights, as Miyares points out with Muslim Americans following the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.
Miyares and his GOP colleagues also added:
“Anti-Catholic bigotry appears to be festering in the FBI, and the Bureau is treating Catholics as potential terrorists because of their beliefs,”
“We are the chief legal officers of our respective States charged not only with enforcing the law, but also with securing the civil rights of our citizens… The FBI must immediately and unequivocally order agency personnel not to target Americans based on their religious beliefs and practices,” adding that they would be “[taking] appropriate means to protect the rights of our constituents as guaranteed by our Constitution.”
The FBI has since responded, saying:
“While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, this particular field office product – disseminated only within the FBI – regarding racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI… The FBI is committed to sound analytic tradecraft and to investigating and preventing acts of violence and other crimes while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
“The FBI is committed to sound analytic tradecraft and to investigating and preventing acts of violence and other crimes while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
