FBI intelligence officers who warned of Catholic extremism in the US fired

Several FBI analysts linked to the formulation of a 2023 internal intelligence memo warning of the potential danger from Catholic "violent extremists" in the U.S. were fired on Friday, according to their lawyer.

The latest wave of layoffs under Director Kash Patel includes four intelligence analysts and one supervisory analyst. The FBI declined to comment.

The memo, an "intelligence product" from January 2023, compiled by analysts at the FBI's field office in Richmond, Virginia, quickly became public and became a political issue, with Republicans in the US Congress repeatedly citing it as evidence of their broader claim that the FBI targeted conservatives during the administration of former President Joseph Biden.

Then-director Chris Wray repeatedly denied the accusation, and the FBI announced at the time that the document was quickly retracted and an internal review was launched.

The layoffs are part of a broader personnel purge under Patel, a Trump loyalist who last year fired dozens of officials who either contributed to investigations against the president or were deemed out of line with the administration's agenda.

The FBI in February fired a group of counterintelligence agents who were involved in an investigation into President Donald Trump over his storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Richmond Memorandum, which emerged from a domestic terrorism investigation, sought to examine the potential link between what was called the ideology of "radical traditionalist Catholics" and racially and ethnically motivated extremists. It warned of the potential for violence and also highlighted what the authors described as "new avenues for fraud." FBI leadership quickly denounced the findings when the document became public.

An internal FBI audit, 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 analytical standards," that they arbitrarily defined a form of religion, and "linked it to the ideology of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism without sufficient evidence."

Failure to adhere to standards, including the proper terminology for domestic terrorism, "created the impression that the FBI was conducting investigative activities based on religious affiliation," the letter said.

However, in 2024, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice assessed the FBI report that, although there were deviations from proper analytical procedures, "no evidence of malicious intent or improper purpose" of the document was found.