A report published Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee said the FBI spied on a priest because he refused to discuss private conversations he had with a parishioner who was converting to Catholicism, which is "deeply troubling," said Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C.
"If you look at the early steps of the FBI memo, what they did was they used radical dialogue from the Southern Poverty Law Center. They used Salon magazine in how they targeted Catholics," Fry told Newsmax's "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE."
"They used those opinions as a basis to form this memo that targeted Catholics. ... The priest was under investigation because he refused to give information to the FBI related to one of his parishioners.
"When you go to confession, you're not supposed to divulge those things. It's almost like an attorney-client relationship. And so they use that as a basis."
"And the FBI, of course, lied through their teeth to the Congress. They didn't disclose the information. Thankfully, [FBI Director] Kash Patel is there now who gave us this information.
"But they said that it was isolated to the Richmond [Virginia] field office. We now know that there were other field offices that were involved, including the main FBI, that helped draft the Catholic memo."
"So this is deeply troubling, that they would target Americans on constitutionally protected rights just by virtue of them being Catholic."
The House report said there appeared to be "no legitimate law-enforcement purpose for investigating this priest."
"This new information suggests that the FBI's religious liberty abuses were more widespread than the FBI initially admitted and led the public to believe," it added.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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