Governor Abigail Spanberger has named Stanley Meador, the FBI official who oversaw a 2023 memo branding traditionalist Catholics as potential terrorists, to co-chair her new prison reform council.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has tapped Stanley Meador, the former FBI Richmond field office chief behind an infamous memo targeting traditionalist Catholics, to co-chair her newly created Community Partnership Council on Corrections, according to the Washington Free Beacon. The appointment, confirmed by the Daily Signal, the Daily Wire and the National Catholic Register, comes months after Spanberger made Meador her secretary of public safety and homeland security, the top law enforcement post in state government.
Meador ran the Richmond field office in January 2023 when it produced an internal intelligence document titled "Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities." The memo, which leaked in February 2023 and drew on research from the Southern Poverty Law Center, flagged Catholics who attend the Latin Mass as a potential source of domestic violent extremism and floated the FBI cultivating sources inside churches. The bureau retracted it within days. FBI Director Christopher Wray at the time called the document "appalling" and said it never should have been produced.
The fallout was not minor. The Justice Department's inspector general opened a review, the House Judiciary Committee launched its own investigation, and Meador was eventually placed on leave before his ouster from the bureau in June 2025. He testified to Congress about his role and, according to internal FBI documents obtained by the Daily Wire, joked that the episode would make good material for a memoir. He met with Catholic Diocese of Richmond leaders, including Bishop Barry Knestout, in March 2023 and apologized for the "negative attention" the memo brought, but stopped short of apologizing for what the memo actually said.
Six months later, Spanberger's transition team announced Meador as her nominee for secretary of public safety. Now he sits atop the state agency that oversees Virginia's prisons and co-chairs the panel Spanberger says will guide corrections policy for years after she leaves office. The governor described the council as a body that will "create a permanent, structured forum for dialogue and action on the issues that matter most" and "build a foundation for Virginia long after I am no longer in this office."
Catholic groups and Republicans call it an endorsement
CatholicVote's national political director, Logan Church, called the appointment "an endorsement" of the memo itself. "It tells every Catholic in America that violating our civil liberties isn't a problem, it's a pathway to advancement," Church said. Virginia Republicans have raised similar objections since Meador's nomination was first announced in December, pointing to the House Judiciary Committee's own findings that the Richmond memo reflected a broader pattern the panel's report called the FBI's manufacture of a "false narrative" casting Catholic Americans as violent extremists.
Spanberger built her national profile as a former CIA officer and moderate Democrat willing to break with her party, a brand that helped carry her to the governor's mansion. Elevating Meador into two of the most consequential law enforcement roles in Virginia sits uneasily next to that image. It is one thing to hire a career FBI hand with management experience. It is another to hand the reins of corrections policy to the man who ran the office that treated the Latin Mass as a security threat, and who has yet to disavow the memo's substance rather than just its rollout.
Neither Spanberger's office nor Meador has publicly addressed the specific criticism from CatholicVote or offered further comment beyond the March 2023 meeting with diocesan leaders. Whether Meador speaks to the controversy directly, or Spanberger's team offers a fuller defense of the pick, will shape how the story moves in Richmond. For now, the Community Partnership Council on Corrections begins its work under a co-chair whose FBI record is the reason national Catholic organizations are watching Virginia's public safety office more closely than they otherwise would.
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