Utah Sheriff Mike Smith and FBI Director Kash Patel pause during a new conference in Orem, Utah, Sept. 12, 2025, announcing details on the suspect in the killing of U.S. conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem Sept. 10. (OSV News photo\/Cheney Orr, Reuters)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cWeaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI,\u201d Patel said. \u201cEven while those who developed the unacceptable Richmond Catholic memo under the previous administration have been held accountable, releasing information to the public about what occurred under the prior regime is an important part of the process. I want to thank the Weaponization Working Group for their partnership as well as Attorney General Todd Blanche for his leadership addressing these abuses and making sure they never happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Richmond memo was a controversial leaked and retracted FBI document that discussed \u201cradical traditionalist\u201d Catholics as those who may pose threats of racially or ethnically motivated violence.<\/p>\n
That document drew a distinction between \u201cradical traditionalist\u201d Catholics as \u201cseparate and distinct\u201d from \u201ctraditionalist Catholics,\u201d who it described as Catholics who \u201csimply prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings.\u201d The same FBI memo noted that \u201cconversely, deep-seated anti-Catholicism remains a characteristic of many far-right white nationalists.\u201d Some of the groups named in the memo are not canonically recognized by the Catholic Church, including the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary located in Richmond, New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
However, that memo was sharply criticized as anti-Catholic and promptly retracted by the FBI, which said the memo did not meet its standards. Christopher Wray, the FBI director at the time the Richmond memo was written, was first nominated to that role by Trump in 2017. During congressional testimony in 2023, Wray described himself as \u201caghast\u201d at the Richmond memo\u2019s contents.<\/p>\n
Documents previously released in 2025 during a congressional investigation of the Richmond memo alleged that an FBI investigation that led to the lawful arrest of \u201ccareer criminal Xavier Louis Lopez\u201d for the possession of unlawful weapons also resulted in \u201cthe targeting of his priest and an entire Catholic sect to which Lopez happened to adhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, those documents from the congressional investigation of the memo suggested that agents were unfamiliar with the Society of St. Pius X, sometimes called SSPX, which has since incurred excommunication from the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
On July 1, 2026, SSPX illicitly consecrated four new bishops without authorization from the Holy See, despite a warning from Pope Leo XIV, leading the Vatican to declare the group in formal schism with the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
The subject of the FBI investigation appeared to have an interest in SSPX, documents released in the congressional investigation suggested, and agents were seeking to understand the group and its relationship to the Catholic Church, not that the SSPX itself was under investigation.<\/p>\n
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n
![](\"http:\/\/thedialog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/SITS.Leaderboard.png\"\/)
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\nkabarsula SLOT <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Then-acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche attends a news conference at the Justice Department in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kabarsula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thedialog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/28102446\/20260828T1001-DOJ-FBI-RICHMOND-MEMO-REPORT-1825341-640x427.jpg\" "\\"FILE")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thedialog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/28102446\/20260828T1001-DOJ-FBI-RICHMOND-MEMO-REPORT-1825341-scaled.jpg\" "\\"FILE")
<\/a>![](\"https:\/\/thedialog.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/31135457\/DIALOG-DIGITAL-AD-ILG-TOP-INSET-800x100-07-17-26-V1.png\"\/)
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n