Five FBI analysts who helped create a 2023 intelligence memo warning of threats from "Catholic violent extremists" have been fired, marking the latest casualties in a sweeping personnel overhaul at the bureau under director Kash Patel.
The terminations on Friday included four intelligence analysts and one supervisory analyst, according to their attorney, David Laufman. He called the firings "manifestly unjust" and argued they violated standard FBI procedures, despite what he characterized as exemplary service from his clients.
The memo in question emerged from the FBI's Richmond, Virginia field office in January 2023 as part of a domestic terrorism investigation. It examined potential connections between what analysts termed "Radical Traditionalist Catholic" ideology and racially motivated extremists, warning of violence risks and identifying new investigative opportunities.
Once the document surfaced publicly, it became a political flashpoint. Republicans in Congress seized on it as evidence that the FBI under President Joe Biden targeted conservative Americans. Former director Chris Wray denied the charge, and the agency quickly withdrew the memo and launched an internal review. Attorney General Merrick Garland stated he was "appalled" by it.
The internal FBI investigation, detailed in a 2023 letter to Congress, found that everyone involved in creating and approving the product failed to meet analytic standards. The analysis, the review concluded, equated the subjects' religious interests with violent extremist ideology without sufficient evidence. That analytical failure "created the appearance that the FBI conducts investigative activity based on religious affiliation," the letter stated, directly contradicting a fundamental FBI principle against investigations based solely on First Amendment protections.
A Justice Department inspector general report the following year affirmed the analytical shortcomings but found "no evidence of malicious intent or improper purpose." The distinction between sloppy work and deliberate misconduct proved irrelevant to the outcome.
The firings fit a larger pattern under Patel, a Trump loyalist who has purged dozens of FBI employees either connected to investigations of the president or perceived as ideologically misaligned with the administration. In February alone, the bureau terminated a group of counterintelligence agents who participated in the classified documents investigation at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. The Justice Department has pursued similarly aggressive firings across federal prosecutors in the weeks since Trump's second presidency began in early 2025.
Author James Rodriguez: "Firing analysts for poor tradecraft is one thing, but doing it years later, only under a new director hostile to prior investigations, sends a message about why the work got sloppy in the first place."
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