During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) lambasted Attorney General Merrick Garland over the FBI’s apparent loathing for, and mistreatment of, conservative Catholics. The questioning centered on two issues (1) the excessive use of force against, and wrongful prosecution of, Catholic pro-life activist Mark Houck, and (2) the Richmond Memorandum, in which the FBI planned to target conservative Catholics for invasive surveillance.
The Mark Houck Case
Hawley’s first line of questioning related to the excessive force used in the FBI’s arrest of Mark Houck, and the subsequent absurdly wrongful prosecution of the pro-life activist and father of seven.
As we reported, last month Houck was acquitted of having violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a federal crime for protestors to to hinder, injure, or intimidate anyone attempting to obtain or provide abortion services. But video of the altercation showed that Houck and his 12-year-old son were not blocking the clinic entrance, and did not initiate the altercation. Rather, Houck was reacting to a clinic escort’s obnoxious and aggressive behavior toward his son.
Local officials declined to pursue charges, and although the clinic escort filed a private criminal complaint, it was dismissed. When Houck’s attorneys learned that a federal grand jury was targeting Houck, he offered through his attorneys to appear for questioning, or turn himself in. Yet the FBI sent some 20 to 30 agents to his home in an early morning raid, clad in black body armor and brandishing assault rifles.
Several senators questioned Garland about the egregious episode, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mike Lee, of Utah, both of whom contrasted the FBI’s astonishing mistreatment of Houck with its lack of interest in finding the perpetrators of a rash of fire-bombings of pro-life pregnancy counseling centers shortly after the Dobbs opinion was issued. (Garland’s ludicrous response was that the FBI, the world’s premier law enforcement agency, cannot effectively investigate crimes that happen at night.)
But no one else laid into Garland quite as effectively as Josh Hawley, who lost patience with Garland’s anodyne and evasive answers. While displaying a photo of several FBI agents armed with long guns and ballistic shields at the Houck’s front door, Hawley demanded:
“Why did the Justice Department do this? Why did you send 20 to 30 SWAT-style agents in a SWAT-style team to this guy’s house when everyone else declined to prosecute and he’d offered to turn himself in?”
“You don’t agree with my description? I’m pointing out what the photo depicts,” Hawley fired back, pointing to the picture his staffers displayed on an easel. “There are agents here who have long guns and ballistic shields.”
The senator then displayed a photograph of the Houck clan posing for a family photo at church.
“Lets take a look at the hardened criminals that your Justice Department sent these armed agents to go terrorize on that morning. Here they are! Here they are at Mass. Here’s the seven children with Mr. Houck and his wife … Mrs. Houck has said repeatedly the children were screaming, they feared for their lives … he had offered to turn himself in! And this is who you go to terrorize?!”
When Hawley asked Garland if he believed that the FBI’s show of force against the Houck family was “objectively necessary,” the Attorney General demurred that decisions on the amount of force to use in an arrest are made by “FBI agents on the ground.”
“You’re the Attorney General of the United States.” Hawley replied. “You are in charge of the Justice Department, and yes sir! You are responsible, so give me an answer!”
Garland responded that FBI does not agree with the assessment that 20 to 30 agents raided the Houck home.
“I’m not asking the FBI!” Hawley interjected. “You are the attorney general. Give me your answer. Do you think it was objectively reasonable—and they used your [use of force] guidelines—sending 20 to 30 armed agents to terrorize these people?”
Garland responded that the FBI’s version of events was “not consistent with” Hawley’s description.
“What? That the children weren’t there? That there weren’t long guns there, that there weren’t agents? What do you dispute? What is the factual premise you dispute, be specific.”
Senator Hawley noted that the federal jury had acquitted Houck rather routinely:
“One hour! The Philadelphia District Attorney declines to prosecute, the private suit is dismissed. You used an unbelievable show of force with guns, I might note, that liberals usually decry. You’re supposed to hate long guns and assault style weapons—but you’re happy to deploy them against Catholics and innocent children! Happy to! And then you haul him into court and a jury acquits him in one hour!”
“I just suggest to you that that is a disgraceful performance by your Justice Department and a disgraceful use of resources.”
The Richmond Memorandum
Toward the end of his seven minutes of questioning, Hawley asked Garland about an FBI memorandum that argued, based upon slanderous accusations by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a discredited far-Left hate group, that Roman Catholics who attend the traditional Latin-language mass are likely to breed, “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”
The memorandum was leaked by an FBI agent-turned-whistleblower named Kyle Seraphin, who was immediately relieved of duty for leaking the memorandum, and ultimately fired.
The memo opines with “high confidence” that the FBI can “mitigate” the “threat” of “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” (RTCs, the document’s author calls them) by placing agents and informants inside of conservative Catholicism. Radical Traditional Catholics are “typically characterized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council,” the memo asserts. The FBI consulted only far-left sources such as the SPLC, the Atlantic magazine, and Salon in forming its opinion that conservative Catholics are incipient terrorists.
What is astonishing is that it never occurred to the memo’s author to note that all of these religious beliefs and opinions—using the rosary to pray, preference for the Latin-language mass, or disagreement with the Vatican II council—are protected by the “free exercise” of religion clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, office thinks that it is totally appropriate and proper for the FBI to single out conservative Christians for the invasive surveillance technique of placing an FBI informant (probably several, and eventually dozens, scores, and hundreds—because that is how today’s FBI always operates) in their midst.
This document was reviewed and approved for release by the FBI Richmond Chief Division Counsel, the office’s top lawyer. Apparently everyone in the Richmond field office of the FBI, even their legal counsel, thinks it is appropriate to single out conservative Christians for heightened scrutiny based solely on their religious beliefs. (And Richmond is very close, geographically, to the rotting head of this rogue agency, in Washington, D.C.) This is the FBI’s level of contempt for the constitution and for religious liberty.
Garland responded to Senator Hawley’s questioning by noting that he does not approve of the Richmond Memorandum, asserting that it had been “withdrawn.”
Hawley: “The FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, on the 23rd of January of this year issued a memorandum in which they advocated for “the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development” against traditionalist Catholics including those who favor the Latin mass. Attorney General, are you cultivating sources and spies in Latin Mass parishes and other Catholic parishes around they country?”
Garland: “No, the Justice Department does not do that, it does not do investigations based on religion. I saw the document you [referenced]; it’s appalling. It’s appalling. I’m in complete agreement with you. I understand that the FBI has withdrawn it, and is now looking into how this could ever have happened.
Hawley: “How did it happen?”
Garland: “that’s what they’re looking into. But I’m totally in agreement with you: that document is appalling.”
Hawley: “I’ll tell you how it happened. This memorandum, which is supposed to be “intelligence,” cites extensively the Southern Poverty Law Center, which goes on to identify all of these different Catholics as being a part of hate groups. Is this how the FBI, under your direction and leadership, is this how they do their intelligence work, they look at Left-wing advocacy groups to target Catholics? Is this what’s going on? Clearly it is. How is this happening?
Garland: “The FBI is not targeting Catholics, and as I’ve said, this is an inappropriate memorandum, and it doesn’t reflect the methods that the FBI is supposed to be using; [they] should not be relying on any single organization without doing their own work.”
Hawley: “Let me just ask you, as my time expires here, a very direct question: how many informants do you have in Catholic churches in America?
Garland: “I don’t know, and I don’t believe we have any informants aimed at Catholic Churches. We have a rule against investigations based upon First Amendment activity, and the Catholic Churches are obviously First Amendment, but I don’t know the specific answer to your question.
Hawley: “You don’t know the specifics of anything, it seems! But apparently on your watch this Justice Department is targeting Catholics, targeting people of faith specifically for their faith views, and Mr. Attorney General, I’ll just say to you it’s a disgrace!
Postscript: It is probably unfair to place too much blame on Merrick Garland, who appeared weak, unsteady, and nervous in his feeble attempts at denial, diversion and obfuscation. The figureheads in this administration appear senescent and frail because they are. Garland was installed as AG for the same reason Biden was installed in the White House: because he is a controllable puppet.
The person calling the shots at DOJ is Lisa Monaco. Monaco, a graduate of Harvard and the University of Chicago Law School, began her DOJ career as counsel to Janet Reno. (Anyone remember Waco?)
Then Monaco was a member of the Enron Task Force, where she worked under Andrew Weissmann, later chief counsel for the illegitimate Mueller special counsel investigation of President Trump—which was nothing but deep-state harassment of a sitting president, based upon Clinton-purchased lies that everyone who was anyone in Washington D.C. knew perfectly well were complete nonsense.
The Enron Task Force wrongfully charged and destroyed the venerable accounting firm Arthur Anderson, LLP, by taking the position that the charged offenses required no mens rea, i.e., that the accountants did not need to know they were doing anything wrong in order to be found guilty. This theory was later repudiated by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 9-0 opinion but by then it was too late: Arthur Anderson had been destroyed and 7,000 accountants thrown out of work.
Then Monaco was Chief of Staff at the FBI under Director Robert Mueller, then Assistant AG for National Security. From 2013-2017, Monaco was Deputy AG for Homeland Security, and the Counterterrorism Advisor to President Barack Obama.
According to people who have studied it closely, it was during this time—Obama’s second term—that Obama and his inner circle figured out how to weaponize the FBI against his political enemies, prominently including conservatives and conservative Christians—which is what we see today. Monaco was right in the middle of that conspiracy.
In June, 2021, Garland announced that Monaco would lead a “whole of government” effort to label any political opposition to the Biden regime “domestic terrorists.” To facilitate that objective, Garland announced that Monaco was reconstituting “the domestic terrorism executive committee,” a tool used in the aftermath of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City, in 1995. Garland publicly claimed that the January 6th Capitol protest—in which the only person killed was an unarmed U.S. Air Force veteran named Ashli Babbitt, who was shot in the throat by a Capitol security guard—was just like the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, including babies and children, and injured 680.
The Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, led by Monaco, is directing the same level of resources against the January 6th defendants as were deployed in the wake of the 1995 bombing.
The astonishing weaponization of the FBI against conservatives, which Senator Hawley was complaining about, was created by Lisa Monaco during Obama’s second and third terms. Just as Andrew Weissmann was the real power behind Robert Mueller, so Lisa Monaco is the real power behind Merrick Garland.
Lisa Monaco is running the Dept of Justice, but she and many of the other members of the Obama Marxist Cabal running the U.S. government know that it is safer and much more fun to have figurehead bosses who can be sent to Capitol Hill to be yelled at by the likes of Hawley, Cruz and Lee (who are probably in the know, and creating sound bites for the folks back home, but have no real plans to effectively de-weaponize the federal government).