FBI Director Kash Patel dismissed a group of analysts tied to a 2023 intelligence memo that labeled traditional Catholics as potential violent extremists, and the loudest objections came not from civil libertarians worried about government overreach, but from legacy media outlets and former officials rushing to defend the analysts who produced it.

The fired FBI personnel reportedly included four intelligence analysts and one supervisory analyst. All were connected to the creation of an intelligence product out of the FBI's Richmond, Virginia field office that, in January 2023, warned of a supposed threat from "extremist" traditional Catholics, a document that drew immediate outrage from Congressional Republicans, Catholic organizations, and First Amendment advocates.

The firings landed on Friday. The FBI has not commented. But the reaction from certain quarters tells you everything about whose ox is being gored.

What the FBI's own review found

The defenders of these analysts have a problem: the FBI itself already concluded the memo was indefensible.

An internal FBI review, described in a 2023 letter to Congress and based on interviews with 26 people, delivered a damning verdict. The review found that every individual involved in creating, reviewing, and approving the product "failed to adhere to analytic tradecraft standards." That is the FBI's own language, not a political opponent's characterization.

The review went further. It found the memo "equated the subjects' interest in their self-described form of religion with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (RMVE) ideology without sufficient evidence or articulable support." In plain English: the analysts drew a line from attending a Latin Mass to domestic terrorism, and they couldn't back it up.

The internal review also concluded the product "created the appearance that the FBI conducts investigative activity based on religious affiliation." The review invoked one of the Bureau's foundational principles, that investigative activity may not be based solely on the exercise of rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

That is not a close call. That is a finding that analysts inside a federal law enforcement agency produced work that looked like religious profiling, violated the Bureau's own standards, and lacked the evidence to justify its conclusions.

The SPLC problem

The Richmond memo's sourcing makes the picture worse. A report issued earlier this year by the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, created under an executive order by President Trump, cited the FBI Richmond office for a "misplaced reliance" on the Southern Poverty Law Center in its analysis.

That task force report stated bluntly that "The Biden Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated, monitored, tracked, and scrutinized traditional Catholics who had engaged in no criminal misconduct."

The SPLC's credibility as a source for federal law enforcement has only deteriorated since. In April, a federal grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on criminal charges alleging it lied to donors and banks, and funneled more than $3 million to the very hate groups it claimed to oppose by paying members as informants.

So the analysts the media now champion built their threat assessment on a source that the FBI's own review found inadequate, that a federal task force called a "misplaced reliance," and that a grand jury has since charged with fraud. That context matters.

The defense and its limits

David Laufman, a lawyer representing the dismissed analysts, issued a statement reported by the Associated Press. Laufman called the firings unjust and unsupported:

"This action is manifestly unjust, completely unsupported by the facts, and subverts standard FBI policy and procedure. These individuals deserved far better for the exceptional and faithful public service they rendered to protect our country."

CBS News cited another review that defended the analysts. The New York Times framed Patel's decision as the latest move by the administration to push out law enforcement personnel it accuses of "weaponizing" the government. The Associated Press described the firings as part of a "broader personal purge" and labeled Patel a "Trump loyalist."

That framing does real work. It asks readers to see the firings not as accountability for a specific, documented failure, but as part of a political vendetta. Some reports portrayed the dismissals exactly that way.

But notice what gets lost in that framing: the substance of the memo itself, and the FBI's own findings about it.

The Garland hearing

Even the Biden administration couldn't fully defend the Richmond product. In late 2023, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the matter. Garland denied the Justice Department was discriminating against Catholics and said he was "appalled" by the memo.

"Appalled" is Garland's word, not a Republican talking point. If Biden's own attorney general found the memo appalling, the suggestion that firing the people who produced it amounts to a political purge requires some explaining.

Congressional Republicans at the time charged that the Biden administration was targeting "traditionalist" Catholics as extremists and sending undercover agents into their churches. Those charges were treated by much of the press as partisan overreach. The FBI's internal review, the task force report, and the SPLC indictment have since added considerable weight to those concerns.

A pattern of media framing

The AP reported that Patel had pushed out "dozens of employees" who were part of investigations of Trump or not aligned with his agenda. It cited the February firing of counterintelligence agents who participated in the investigation into Trump's possession of purported classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Lumping the Richmond memo analysts together with agents from unrelated investigations serves a narrative purpose. It transforms a specific accountability action, firing people whose work the FBI itself found deficient, into evidence of a sweeping, indiscriminate campaign. The two situations involve different facts, different conduct, and different justifications. Collapsing them into one storyline obscures more than it reveals.

The Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias report laid out the case in detail. The Richmond office produced a document that scrutinized Americans for their religious practice, not their criminal conduct. The FBI's own internal review confirmed the product failed basic analytic standards. And the outside source the analysts leaned on, the SPLC, now faces federal criminal charges.

What accountability looks like

The question the defenders of these analysts have never answered cleanly is this: if producing an intelligence product that your own agency finds violated tradecraft standards, equated religious belief with violent extremism without evidence, and created the appearance of religious profiling does not warrant termination, what does?

Merrick Garland was appalled. The FBI's 26-person review found failures at every level of the product's creation and approval. A presidential task force documented the targeting of Catholics who committed no crime. The nonprofit the analysts relied upon has been indicted for fraud.

And yet the press frames the firings as a vendetta.

The analysts' lawyer says they rendered "exceptional and faithful public service." Perhaps they did in other capacities. But the Richmond memo was not an example of it. The FBI's own review said so, in writing, after talking to 26 people. That is not a political hit job. That is an institutional finding.

When federal agents produce work that treats churchgoing Americans as potential terrorists based on their liturgical preferences, and when the agency's own review confirms the work was unsupported and violated core principles, firing the people responsible is not a purge. It is the bare minimum a free country should expect from its law enforcement institutions.

If the FBI can't hold its own analysts accountable for targeting Americans over how they pray, someone else will have to. That's exactly what happened Friday.