FBI fires five at Richmond Field Office over Catholic memo
RICHMOND — Five employees at the FBI Richmond Field Office lost their jobs last week over an internal memorandum that the field office wrote three and a half years ago to raise concerns about the potential for domestic terrorism from "radical traditionalist Catholics" because of a case involving a Henrico County resident who was convicted in federal court for possessing Molotov cocktails and other "destructive devices" after publicly advocating violence against police and perceived political opponents.
President Donald Trump and national Republicans have long used the disputed memo — which the FBI said didn't meet its professional standards but had no malicious intent — to accuse then-President Joe Biden and national Democrats of targeting Catholics in weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice against their political opponents.
The furor reportedly cost Stanley Meador his job as special agent in charge of the Richmond Field Office last year after a powerful Republican senator reopened an investigation of the memo with Trump in the White House. Six months later, incoming Gov. Abigail Spanberger named Meador her secretary of public safety and homeland security, citing the Galax native's law enforcement record and popularity with law enforcement leaders across the state.
In this file photo, former FBI Special Agent in Charge Stanley Meador, middle right, is shown alongside Henrico Police Chief Eric English, right, and John Venuti, middle left, associate vice president for public safety at VCU. Meador lost his job last year over a memorandum written three years ago to raise concerns about the potential for domestic terrorism from "radical traditionalist Catholics."
On Friday, national news outlets reported that FBI Director Kash Patel had fired four intelligence analysts and a supervisor for their alleged involvement in the memo.
The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice did not publicly comment, but Patel wrote in a social media post Friday, “This FBI will never infringe on religious freedom.”
David Laufman, a Washington attorney representing the fired employees, pushed back against the Trump administration in a statement to the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Tuesday.
“A great injustice has been done to individuals who selflessly devoted themselves to protecting the public safety of the Richmond area and the national security of the United States," said Laufman, former chief of counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Justice and a former federal prosecutor.
"As the facts of this matter make clear, there is no merit — absolutely zero — to any notion that these individuals possessed a shred of 'anti-Catholic' bias or discriminatory intent," he said. "Indeed, the very opposite is true, as the sole purpose of the FBI intelligence product at issue was to protect a local Catholic faith community by sensitizing it to the threat posed by a violent extremist.”
The Richmond Field Office wrote the memo and distributed it to other FBI offices in January 2023 after the investigation of a 25-year-old Henrico man who had publicly advocated violence against police officers and minorities, as well as the production of firearms using 3-D printing technology. Police found eight Molotov cocktails, an almost completed 3-D printed gun and boxes of hollow-point bullets in the man's Henrico home in late 2022.
Molotov cocktails were seized from Xavier Louis Lopez’s residence in Henrico County in 2022. In a letter to Congress two years ago, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said that a Richmond FBI task force that had been monitoring Lopez since 2019 considered him the field office's "highest priority domestic terrorism subject."
The man, Xavier Louis Lopez, previously had served one year of a five-year sentence in state court after slashing the tires of neighbors in Henrico whose political views he opposed and attacking police officers who arrested him in August 2020. The earlier investigation found a stockpile of weapons and ammunition in the home in which he lived with his aunt.
In a letter to Congress two years ago, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said that a Richmond FBI task force that had been monitoring Lopez since 2019 considered him the field office's "highest priority domestic terrorism subject."
In late 2024, Lopez pleaded guilty to felony possession of destructive devices that the FBI had found in his home in late 2022. He was sentenced last year to more than eight years in prison.
As part of the investigation, the FBI began looking at his membership in a traditionalist Catholic Church in Henrico that he had joined in early 2022. Horowitz, the inspector general, said the church is "associated with an international religious society that advocates traditional Catholic theology and liturgy but is not considered by the Vatican to be in full communion with the Catholic Church."
The disputed memo said domestic terrorists could use traditionalist Catholic churches to proselytize and suggested contacting three churches in Virginia to ask their leaders to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior.
The FBI purged the memo after it was leaked to a national news outlet. An internal review concluded that the analysts were not motivated by bias but said the FBI had instituted some corrective measures in the aftermath of the memo's leak.
But the memo drew rebukes from then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, who called it "appalling," and the Catholic Diocese of Richmond.
Richmond Bishop Barry C. Knestout called the memo "troubling and offensive to all communities of faith, as well as all Americans."
In 2024, 16 Republican senators resurrected the issue with a letter to then-FBI Director Christopher Wray that accused the bureau of deleting records of the memo and alleged that the field office had prepared a second memo for circulation outside the agency.
The FBI responded at the time, "Any characterization that the FBI is targeting Catholics is false. As the FBI has stated many times, the intelligence product did not meet our exacting standards and was quickly removed from FBI systems."
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, renewed his probe of what he called "the Biden FBI anti-Catholic memo" a year ago. Four days later, the bureau, under Patel, placed Meador on administrative leave, according to a national news report. Local law enforcement leaders in the Richmond area confirmed Meador's departure the next month.
Meador, whose level of involvement in the memo's production remains unclear, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
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