WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Several FBI analysts tied to the creation of a 2023 memo warning of a potential threat from Catholic \u201cviolent extremists\u201d were fired Friday, according to their lawyer, the latest wave of terminations under Director Kash Patel.<\/p>\n
The fired employees included four intelligence analysts and a supervisory analyst. The FBI declined to comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis action is manifestly unjust, completely unsupported by the facts, and subverts standard FBI policy and procedure,\u201d their lawyer, David Laufman, said in a statement. \u201cThese individuals deserved far better for the exceptional and faithful public service they rendered to protect our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The January 2023 intelligence product produced by analysts in the FBI\u2019s Richmond, Va., field office emerged as a political focal point after it was issued, with Republicans in Congress citing it as part of their broader claim that the FBI during the Biden administration was targeting conservatives. <\/p>\n
Then-FBI Director Chris Wray denied that allegation and the agency has said the document was quickly retracted and an internal review was launched. Merrick Garland, the attorney general under President Biden, has said he was \u201cappalled\u201d by the memo.<\/p>\n
Earlier Justice Department investigations into the memo challenged the analytical tradecraft but did not find intentional misconduct by the analysts involved.<\/p>\n
The firings are part of a broader personnel purge under Patel, a President Trump loyalist who over the last year has pushed out dozens of employees who either contributed to investigations of the president or who were perceived as not in alignment with the administration\u2019s agenda. The Justice Department has engaged in similarly sweeping firings of prosecutors since Trump took office last year.<\/p>\n
In February, for instance, the FBI fired a group of counterintelligence agents who participated in the investigation into Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.<\/p>\n
Critics including former federal officials say the purge has transformed federal law enforcement agencies into politically motivated extensions of the Trump White House. The classified documents investigation resulted in a federal indictment against Trump, but the case was dismissed after his 2024 election. <\/p>\n
The Richmond memo, which emerged from a domestic terrorism investigation, sought to examine a potential link between what it called \u201cRadical Traditionalist Catholic\u201d ideology and racially and ethnically motivated extremists. It warned of the potential for violence and also highlighted what the authors described as \u201cnew avenues for tripwire and source development.\u201d FBI leadership quickly condemned those findings once the document became public.<\/p>\n
An internal FBI review described in a 2023 letter to Congress and based on interviews with 26 people \u201cfound 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\u2019 interest in their self-described form of religion with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (RMVE) ideology without sufficient evidence or articulable support.\u201d<\/p>\n
The failure to adhere to standards, including on proper domestic terrorism terminology, \u201ccreated the appearance that the FBI conducts investigative activity based on religious affiliation,\u201d the letter said. \u201cOne of the FBI\u2019s most fundamental principles is that investigative activity may not be based solely on the exercise of rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.\u201d <\/p>\n
A Justice Department inspector general report in 2024 summarized the earlier FBI review by saying that though there were departures from proper analytic tradecraft, \u201cno evidence of a malicious intent or an improper purpose\u201d were found.<\/p>\n
MS NOW earlier reported the firings.<\/p>\n
Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press and reported from Los Angeles and Washington, respectively. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Several FBI analysts tied to the creation of a 2023 memo warning of a potential threat from Catholic…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":849144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[26441,1582,276,347029,347034,199965,347035,12783,48551,347030,347031,5022,2961,13940,224,5337,60753,347033,277,347032],"class_list":["post-849143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-biden-administration","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-catholic-ideology","tag-classified-document","tag-creation","tag-early-justice-department-investigation","tag-fbi","tag-firing","tag-intelligence-analyst","tag-intelligence-product","tag-investigation","tag-la","tag-last-year","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-memo","tag-several-analyst","tag-trump","tag-violent-extremist"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}