The Trump administration is facing rebuke over its release of a report that purports to show the Biden administration’s anti-Christian bias.
On Thursday, the White House’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, led by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of President Donald Trump’s former defense attorneys, released a controversial report that attempts to portray the previous Democratic administration as having launched a partisan attack on Christianity. To give you a sense as to how unfounded these claims are, they include the Biden administration’s law enforcement inquiries into a self-described “radical traditional Catholic Clerical Fascist” and its acknowledgment of Transgender Day of Visibility, which coincidentally fell on Easter last year.
That the White House thinks it has any credibility here is a remarkable window into the administration’s rank derangement, given the recent claims of blasphemy Trump faced after he portrayed himself as Jesus.
The head of the Interfaith Alliance, a faith-based activist group that opposes Christian nationalism, rebuked the report, calling it “abominably hypocritical.” The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush’s statement cited Trump’s recent attacks on Pope Leo and his previous condemnation of Bishop Mariann Budde for delivering a sermon that called for mercy toward immigrants:
Trump’s radical DOJ’s new report is abominably hypocritical. To find anti-Christian bias, the Trump administration should look in the mirror at its own targeting of Christian communities and leaders who dare to oppose its extreme agenda. From attacking Pope Leo to Bishop Budde to so many others, this president has repeatedly threatened and clashed with many of the most prominent Christian denominations in our country.
A hefty portion of the report is dedicated to condemning the Justice Department’s investigation of an extremist in Virginia named Xavier Lopez, who was sentenced to more than eight years in prison after he was found with a bevy of explosives in 2022. Republicans have sought to frame the FBI’s investigation of Lopez and the church he attended as evidence of anti-Catholic bias, but the DOJ’s inspector general debunked that claim, determining there was no “malicious intent” or evidence of bias in the FBI’s probe despite errors in some of the agency’s investigatory practices. At the time, the FBI said its own review had affirmed “there was no intent or actions taken to investigate Catholics or anyone based on religion.”
The Trump administration’s report buries some important context about Lopez that fueled the investigation, according to the Daily Beast:
On his wall hung a giant Nazi flag, with a crucifix and rosary fixed neatly above the swastika.
Federal agents had been tracking Lopez since 2019 over neo-Nazi posts urging followers to shoot police and attack Black Americans and Jews. He also boasted he could do better than Anders Breivik — the far-right killer who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011, Commonweal Magazine reported.
After Lopez began attending Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) Chapel, agents placed an informant inside the parish to find out whether he was trying to recruit fellow worshippers for a violent attack.
The Trump administration’s report also takes aim at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-extremism organization the DOJ recently hit with a bogus indictment. Federal prosecutors say the organization has funded extremism with its investigatory work into extremist groups; the SPLC has vigorously denied the allegations, saying its work has been done largely to help law enforcement target extremists.
MAGA world figures have tried to peddle absurd claims that racist extremism is a liberal contrivance, and this new report seems intent on fueling these claims by citing two officials’ emails raising questions about the SPLC’s methodology in deeming certain religious groups as extreme. But the DOJ’s report also lends credence to the SPLC’s defense of its actions, with its quoting of an official who said the organization “has been a source for statistics and data not otherwise available to law enforcement.”
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.