FBI fires analysts tied to withdrawn memo on Catholic extremists

At least five FBI analysts were told Friday they were being fired over their roles in a withdrawn 2023 memo that warned of a potential threat from Catholic “violent extremists,” a move that sharpens the Trump administration’s campaign to remove officials it says politicized federal law enforcement.

Two people familiar with the matter said the terminations included four intelligence analysts and one supervisory analyst. The memo was written in January 2023 by the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office and quickly became a political flashpoint after Republicans in Congress cited it as evidence that the bureau under President Joe Biden was targeting conservatives. Then-director Chris Wray rejected that accusation, and former attorney general Merrick Garland said he was “appalled” by the memo.

The document referred to “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” ideology and raised concerns about links between ethnically motivated violent extremists and radical Catholic views, including what it described as potential violence and “new avenues for tripwire and source development.” An internal FBI review later found no evidence of malicious intent, but concluded the memo failed to meet proper standards and contained errors in professional judgment. The bureau adopted corrective steps to improve approval processes for intelligence products, and the employees involved were admonished. A separate Justice Department inspector general review found no evidence that anyone directed analysts to draw links between violent extremists and certain religions, or that the analysts made discriminatory or inappropriate comments.

The firings land in the middle of a broader personnel purge under Kash Patel, the Trump loyalist who has moved against employees seen as tied to investigations of Donald Trump or out of step with the administration’s agenda. In February, the FBI fired a group of counterintelligence agents who worked on the investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and the Justice Department has also dismissed large numbers of prosecutors since Trump returned to office. The FBI did not explain the latest terminations.

The episode remains politically potent. In June 2025, Sen. Chuck Grassley said the Richmond memo had been distributed to more than 1,000 FBI employees and that records showed at least 13 additional documents, along with five attachments, using anti-Catholic terminology. The House Judiciary Committee later said the FBI produced more than 1,300 pages of additional records tied to the memo and that the Richmond office coordinated with headquarters and the bureau’s London office in related work. Committee Republicans also said the office interviewed a priest, then surveilled him and opened an investigative assessment after he declined to provide information.

For the FBI, the latest firings set a blunt precedent: flawed analysis can cost careers, but punishing analysts over a withdrawn memo may also chill domestic-extremism reporting at a moment when the bureau is under pressure to show it can police bias without deterring hard intelligence work.