FBI Official Now Working For Virginia Governor Said Anti-Catholic Memo Would Be Great For Memoir

A former FBI official who oversaw the agency’s production of an infamous memo targeting “Radical Traditional Catholics” joked about how it would make good fodder for a memoir, according to emails viewed by The Daily Wire. 

Stanley Meador, who now works in Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger’s administration, ran the FBI’s Richmond field office when it produced an internal memo attempting to link traditional Catholic beliefs to criminal activity. After backlash to the memo, Meador downplayed it and suggested that one of the agents who produced it include it in their memoirs, according to emails released by the Justice Department. 

“No apology needed [redacted],” he wrote on July 7, 2023. “I’m glad you are on the team and thankful for your commitment. Keep that head up, this too shall pass. Will make for a great chapter in your memoirs some day!”

Justice Department report.

The emails were included in a Justice Department report released Thursday morning on anti-Christian bias from the federal government during the Biden administration. 

The document, referred to as the “Richmond Memo,” relied on the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), now facing criminal wire fraud charges, to link racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists with what the agency called “radical-traditionalist” Catholic beliefs. The memo was retracted shortly after it was leaked in February 2023, generating outrage from Republican lawmakers and Catholics. 

Meador’s July 7 email came after one of the FBI agents involved in crafting the memo apologized over the document.

“I am terribly sorry for all that everyone has had to endure as a result of this product. Each person negatively impacted is a trusted colleague and/or supervisor whom I deeply respect and admire,” the unidentified FBI employee wrote. “I feel personally responsible as I should have known the potential DT pitfalls and the susceptibility to politicization surrounding this paper better than anyone. Thanks for supporting us and please accept my sincerest apologies.”

Meador, now Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security in Virginia, was removed from the FBI in June 2025 after serving for over two decades with the agency. 

The Richmond Memo was an FBI product known as a “Domain Perspective,” or an internal threat assessment document. The document argued that the FBI should pursue threat mitigation based on the interest in violent extremists in so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology.” Using SPLC data, the FBI identified nine of these groups.

Other documents included in Thursday’s Justice Department report showed that intelligence officers inside the FBI expressed concerns about the citation of the SPLC, but were ignored by leadership. 

“This product cites more subjective information from SPLC (a list of hate groups) without examining SPLC’s threshold for determining a hate group or explanation of how that threshold aligns with the FBI’s definition,” one intelligence officer wrote. “This product’s Source Summary Statement does not address factors that would affect the quality and credibility of SPLC as a source for subjective information, such as it previously issuing apologies and retracting its naming of individuals or groups as extremist.”

The DOJ wrote in its anti-Christian bias report that the FBI used “an unsubstantiated claim by the Southern Poverty Law Center that several traditional Catholic churches were ‘hate groups’ — as justification to launch a two-pronged attack against traditional Catholics.”

“FBI Richmond thus assessed that traditional Catholics and racially motivated violent extremists may share ‘common cause’ on issues of ‘abortion rights, immigration, affirmative action, and LGBTQ protections,’” the DOJ wrote Thursday. “In an appendix, the Domain Perspective cited to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s identification of radical traditional Catholics.”

As criticism mounted, former President Joe Biden’s FBI Director Christopher Wray said the Richmond Memo did “not reflect FBI standards.”

“We do not conduct investigations based on religious affiliation or practices, full stop,” Wray said. “We have also now ordered our inspection division to take a look at how this happened and try to figure out how we can make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”

In an interview with the task force investigating anti-Christian bias, FBI Director Kash Patel said his team did a deep dive into the Richmond Memo. 

“We came to learn that companies like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League were out there working with the FBI, giving them false information to generate a memo that allowed law enforcement a [] ‘justification’ to go after and attack people of faith,” Patel said. 

The DOJ report also details how the Biden administration targeted pro-life Christians for peaceful protests and outlines other Biden-era policies that suppressed Christian expression.

The release of the report comes one day after The Daily Wire obtained text messages from Biden-era DOJ prosecutors discussing their desires to target Catholic nuns. One prosecutor said he would “like to prosecute any nun who still wears the head habit,” when working on January 6-related cases.