GOP senators demand the FBI 'repair the damage' to it's credibility over anti-Catholic memo debacle
Posted 90 days ago
From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
FIRST ON FOX – A group of Republican senators are demanding that the Federal Bureau of Investigation "repair the damage" to its credibility after a series of errors surrounding the origin of the anti-Catholic memo that targeted traditional Catholics as potential "terrorists."
The memo, which has since been retracted by its creators in the FBI Richmond field office, was a focus in congressional oversight action and hearings last year and garnered significant criticism by Republican lawmakers.
In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Lindsey Graham, R-S. C. and 14 of their colleagues, demanded FBI Director Christopher Wray give a "coherent and complete response" to the Senate after its apparent failures in reviewing how the memo was ever created and the agency’s compliance with congressional oversight on the matter.
"We are writing about the FBI’s failure to provide information requested by members relating to the now infamous Richmond memo while misleading this body with what little information it did provide," the senators wrote.
"We recently also learned that the FBI permanently deleted critical records related to the memo, and one of the authors of the Richmond memo prepared a second, external report in coordination with headquarters that was intended to be circulated outside the Richmond office to the full FBI," they said.
According to the lawmakers, the FBI "for months used its internal review of the Richmond memo as an excuse not to provide records or respond to members’ questions."
"Despite the completion of what we now know was a very narrow internal review, limited to only certain aspects of this single internal analyst report, FBI has repeatedly ignored member requests for records that would enable Congress to conduct its own investigation. This includes FBI’s repeated failure to fulfill the March 1, 2023, request by the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, Charles Grassley, and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member, Lindsey Graham," the letter states.
The ranking members asked the agency for copies of the correspondence between the intelligence analysts who drafted the Richmond memo and anyone of higher rank related to the report, an unredacted copy of the Domain Perspective memo, and a copy of all reports issued within FBI or DOJ within the past five years alleging a link between any primarily religious or conservative association or entity and violent extremism.... (Read more)
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