(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Brian Burch, the president of Catholic Vote, is calling for an investigation into the Justice Department’s leaked anti-Catholic memo and the department’s heavy citation of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Burch said Catholic Vote has been in contact with several members of congress requesting an investigation, according to LifeNews.
He said that the Department of Justice has established a “pattern of anti-Catholic bigotry.”
He clarified the scope of what the FBI had done to Catholics in establishing this pattern.
“It’s not merely a leaked FBI memo, it’s a pattern inside the Department of Justice that fails to prosecute crimes of vandalism, desecration, and domestic terrorism, combined with their hunting down peaceful pro-life protesters, including initiating raids of their homes and their families.”
The probe, then, is an attempt to ensure that Catholics can be protected under the rule of law.
“We’d like to understand what’s happening here. How far up does this go?” he said.
“American Catholics, and frankly fair-minded Americans, deserve answers about whether or not the Department of Justice has breeched a historic norm whereby Catholics and those who believe what Catholics believe are no longer given the protections of equal justice under the law.”
The FBI did reject the memo calling for the infiltration of conservative Catholic circles by FBI agents.
However, even more troubling is the fact that the memo cited “hate groups” listed and classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center, according to the Daily Signal. This is not new, as the FBI has had an incestuous relationship with SPLC at least since the Oklahoma City bombing.
Indeed, a Michigan attorney general, cooperating with the SPLC, weaponized the state’s Civil Rights department to attack Catholics.
Burch commented on the SPLC’s role in the Catholic memo.
The SPLC is a “discredited political extremist group that seeks to unfairly paint their opponents as unworthy of First Amendment protection,” he said. Albeit a discredited extremist group that is now “inciting government law enforcement agencies to enforce its political agenda.”
“The really worrisome thing here is that it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish the Southern Poverty Law Center from the Department of Justice.”
Burch is not alone in his concerns. The Family Research Council and the American Family Association have been denouncing the radicalism of the SPLC since 2019.