By CatholicVote | Created at 2024-12-11 23:54:40 | Updated at 2024-12-18 15:23:32
6 days ago
CV NEWS FEED // Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray announced Dec. 11 that he is resigning his post. The news comes in the wake of numerous scandals involving the agency seeking to spy on Catholic church communities as well as target Catholic and pro-life Americans for prosecution. Wray will leave office early next year.
“In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work,” Wray said during a town hall meeting with FBI employees, according to Reuters.
Under Wray’s leadership, the FBI in September 2022 raided the house of pro-life Catholic Mark Houck at gunpoint in front of his wife and seven children and arrested him. The arrest was in connection with an incident when Houck shoved a pro-abortion clinic escort who had reportedly harassed Houck’s 12-year-old son.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) accused Houck of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Local authorities had already examined the incident and declined to charge Houck. After the DOJ’s prosecution, a jury acquitted the Catholic pro-lifer of the administration’s charge as well.
In August, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), sent a letter to Wray expressing concern that the DOJ and the FBI were weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers. In the same month, Roy’s office had uncovered that 97% of FACE Act prosecutions since 1994 have been against pro-lifers.
The FACE Act forbids (on pain of felony charges) actions against houses of worship, as well as against abortion facilities and pro-life pregnancy centers. CatholicVote has repeatedly confronted the FBI and DOJ, pressing the agencies to prosecute a rash of violence against Catholic churches and pro-life centers throughout the country.
CatholicVote has tracked over 400 attacks on Catholic properties in the U.S. since 2020, and nearly 100 attacks on pro-life resource centers — many of them Catholic-run — since May 2022. Controversially, the FBI and DOJ have prosecuted very few cases on behalf of the victims of those attacks.
In 2023, FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin, a Catholic, revealed the anti-Catholic “Richmond memo” that reportedly authorized FBI agents to spy on Catholic churches.
CatholicVote President Brian Burch stated on Dec. 3, 2023, that a House Judiciary Committee report revealed that “the FBI effort involved at least four field offices – including Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Portland, and Richmond. It also authorized the use of undercover agents to infiltrate Catholic parishes, and used a Catholic priest and a choir director to inform on one of their own parishioners.”
The House Judiciary Committee report also found that the FBI “singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential terrorists.”
Last week, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley sent a letter addressed to Wray and Department of Justice (DOJ) Attorney General Merrick Garland warning them not to allow FBI or DOJ employees to destroy any files or documents related to pro-life prosecutions or spying on Catholics, among other issues.
President-elect Donald Trump posted about Wray’s resignation on Truth Social, saying it “is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice.”
Trump also stated, “They [the FBI] have used their vast powers to threaten and destroy many innocent Americans, some of which will never be able to recover from what has been done to them.”
He then praised attorney Kash Patel, whom Trump recently picked to be the next FBI director, as “the most qualified Nominee to lead the FBI in the Agency’s History,” adding that Patel “is committed to helping ensure that Law, Order, and Justice will be brought back to our Country again, and soon.”
