An investigation into claims made by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that the Department of Justice and the FBI are harassing Catholics was thoroughly debunked by the Washington Post on Monday.
Last week the Missouri Republican made headlines by ranting at Attorney General Merrick Garland that his department has an "anti-Catholic bias" where he made multiple assertions that the Post's Glenn Kessler's claims were more about political grandstanding than they were about reality.
Central to Hawley's grilling of Garland was the arrest of a pastor who was blocking women from going to a family-planning clinic which he insisted was evidence of religious bigotry.
He ranted at Garland about the arrest of anti-abortion activist Mark Houck, insisting, "Your Justice Department sent between 20 and 30 armed agents in the early-morning hours to the Houcks’ private residence to arrest this guy after he had offered to turn himself in voluntarily. Here’s the photo. Once again, you can see the long guns, you can see the ballistic shields, you can see that they’re wearing bulletproof vests. Why did the Justice Department do this? Why did you send 20 to 30 SWAT-style agents in a SWAT-style team to this guy’s house when everybody else had declined to prosecute and he’d offered to turn himself in?”
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While Garland protested, "All I know is what the FBI has said, which was that they made decisions on the ground as to what was safest and easiest. … I’m saying the facts are not as you describe,” an FBI report from last year had already set the record, Kessler reported.
"There are inaccurate claims being made regarding the arrest of Mark Houck. No SWAT team or SWAT operators were involved. FBI agents knocked on Mr. Houck’s front door, identified themselves as FBI agents, and asked him to exit the residence. He did so and was taken into custody without incident pursuant to an indictment," the FBI stated.
According to Kessler, Hawley's "anti-Catholic" rant was limited to abortion clinic harassment, which undercuts his broad-brush attack on the DOJ.
"This is one of those instances in which something may be well-covered in right-wing media and virtually ignored by more mainstream news outlets. For readers unfamiliar with the news reports, it might seem strange that an administration led by a president who is a practicing Catholic is accused of being anti-Catholic. But President Biden also supports abortion rights, which Catholic doctrine rejects. At their heart, both incidents raised by Hawley concern the battle over abortion," he wrote before adding, "The Catholic vote is critical in some battleground states. Edison exit polls in 2020 found that Biden narrowly beat Donald Trump among Catholics, 52 percent to 47 percent. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton among Catholics, 50 percent to 46 percent. That shift may have cost Trump Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2020 — states he narrowly won in 2016 — said Gallup senior scientist Frank Newport. So Republicans’ charges of anti-Catholic bias have electoral implications."
Kessler concluded, "The FBI has a troubled history of surveilling and infiltrating religious groups, such as Muslims, that it considers dangerous. But some religious scholars, while not excusing the law enforcement implications of the memo, said its analysis of the nexus between far-right Catholics and far-right extremism has merit."