The Criminal Wray Perjured Himself to Congress About the Extent of the FBI's Targeting of Traditionalist Catholics As Terrorists; Also Redacted Required Disclosures to Congress to Hide the Extent of the FBI's Spying

House Judiciary GOP @JudiciaryGOP

#BREAKING: Subpoenaed document reveals that the FBI Richmond Field Office coordinated with MULTIPLE field offices across the country to produce a memo targeting traditional Catholics as domestic terrorists

Wray previously said the actions were limited to "a single field office."

The full letter is here.

The main allegations are, first, that the Criminal Wray lied when he claimed the targeting of Catholics as likely terrorists only occurred at a "single FBI office." In fact, the Richmond office coordinate and exchange information with other FBI offices, chiefly the Los Angeles and Portland FBI offices, regarding the Traditionalist Catholic Terrorist Threat.

The second allegation is that the Criminal Wray deliberately redacted information about the coordination with other offices so as to support the lie he was telling Congress and deny them the truth, that the Richmond office was acting in concert with other FBI offices.

Via David Strom, the Wall Street Journal reports:

This story began in February when a whistleblower leaked a heavily redacted January report from the FBI's Richmond office: "Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities."

The document defined "radical-traditionalist Catholics" as those who attend the Latin Mass and who frequently adhere to "anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology." The agents relied on half-baked "open-source" reporting from liberal outlets to justify more bureau investigation.

We keep seeing that last tactic: The leftwingers in the FBI leak their suspicions about a conservative group or a politician to the leftwing media, the leftwing media writes up a story based on these leaks, and then the FBI cites the "mainstream media" story they themselves were the sources for as third-party confirmation of their suspicions.

It is time to make that specific tactic illegal and specify that this tactic itself constitutes obstruction of justice and is punishable by ten years in prison

FBI headquarters quickly said the report didn't meet its "exacting standards" and had been withdrawn. FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Judiciary Committee in July that the report was "a single product by a single field office." He added that "as soon as I found out about it, I was aghast and ordered it withdrawn and removed from FBI systems," and he said he began an internal probe.

He acted to block the external investigation of the FBI, of course.

David Strom points out that the Criminal Wray then used the claim of his half-assed, cover-it-up fake investigation as a reason why he was refusing to provide Congress with the information they sought, so that they could conduct their own investigation:

That investigation, by the way, was his excuse for withholding information from the committee, including redacting documents and not allowing the agents involved to speak to the committee. In itself, this is a bizarre standard, as there are no criminal charges involved and the Congress is charged with oversight of the Executive Branch. Is it now the case that any time the FBI or any other agency wants to hide information from Congress they can just claim they are "investigating" the matter and will tell Congress nothing?

No, it is not, but it will the rule of how the FBI actually behaves unless people start getting impeached or fired, start having their pensions cancelled, and start going to federal prison like all the citizens they've jailed for similarly lying in an investigation or withholding subpeoned documents without legal justification.

posted by Ace at 12:02 PM

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