Critics and legacy news outlets are pouncing on the Trump administration and Director Kash Patel for the Friday firing of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) analysts connected to the creation of a 2023 memo warning of a potential threat from “extremist” traditional Catholics.
The lawyer for the dismissed analysts blasted the move.
“This action is manifestly unjust, completely unsupported by the facts, and subverts standard FBI policy and procedure,” the analysts’ lawyer, David Laufman, said in a statement, reported by the Associated Press and the New York Times.
The fired FBI members reportedly included four intelligence analysts and a supervisory analyst.
“These individuals deserved far better for the exceptional and faithful public service they rendered to protect our country,” Laufman said.
The Times wrote of the dismissals:
The decision by Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, is the latest move by the administration to push out law enforcement personnel it accuses of “weaponizing” the government against President Trump, his supporters, and conservatives generally. Some former federal law enforcement officials have said those efforts amount to a purge of the ranks of independent civil servants, turning law enforcement agencies into ideologically driven arms of the presidency.
However, the intelligence product produced by analysts in January of 2023 in the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia field office was the source of outrage by Congressional Republicans, many Catholics, and First Amendment advocates.
Lawmakers charged that the Biden administration was targeting “traditionalist” Catholics as extremists and sending undercover agents into their churches.
During a House Judiciary hearing on the matter in late 2023, Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s attorney general, denied the Justice Department was discriminating against Catholics but also said he was “appalled” by the memo.
How the memo came about and the inner workings of its creation has been the subject of several probes with some mixed results.
According to the AP report:
An internal FBI review described in a 2023 letter to Congress and based on interviews with 26 people “found that all individuals involved in the creation, review, and approval of the product failed to adhere to analytic tradecraft standards and failed to recognize that the product, as drafted, equated the subjects’ interest in their self-described form of religion with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (RMVE) ideology without sufficient evidence or articulable support.
The failure to adhere to standards, including on proper domestic terrorism terminology, “created the appearance that the FBI conducts investigative activity based on religious affiliation,” the letter said. “One of the FBI’s most fundamental principles is that investigative activity may not be based solely on the exercise of rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.”
However, the AP also reported that the firings were part of a “broader personal purge” under Patel, a “Trump loyalist” who had pushed out “dozens of employees” who were part of investigations of Trump or not aligned with his agenda.
CBS News cited another review that defended the analysts. It reported:
A separate review by the Justice Department’s then-inspector general also did not find any evidence that anyone had ordered or directed the analysts to find linkages between violent extremists and certain religions. There was also no evidence to suggest that the analysts made any discriminatory or inappropriate comments.
Nevertheless, the missteps over the memo have long been a focal point for Mr. Trump’s allies, who have said it represents evidence of bias against Christians with conservative values.
Earlier this year a report by the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, created under an executive order by President Trump, was critical of the 2023 intelligence memo.
“The Biden Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated, monitored, tracked, and scrutinized traditional Catholics who had engaged in no criminal misconduct,” the report alleged.
It also cited FBI Richmond office for a “misplaced reliance” on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in its analysis.
A federal grand jury indicted the nonprofit in April on criminal charges that it lied to donors and banks by allegedly funneling more than $3 million to the hate groups it claimed to oppose by paying members as informants. Hate activity allegedly by the funded extremists then brought in more SPLC donations.
The SPLC has denied any wrongdoing.
Despite the apparent errors made by the fired analysts, some reports are portraying agents’ dismissal as part of a vendetta by the President.
The AP cited the February firing of a group of counterintelligence agents who participated in the investigation into Trump’s possession of purported classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
The FBI has not commented on the most recent firings.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.