Justice Department prosecutors under the Biden administration exchanged texts relishing the chance to prosecute Catholic nuns — particularly traditional nuns “who still wear the head habit.”
One of the prosecutors is now running for the U.S. House as a Democrat in Virginia’s newly carved 7th Congressional District.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, released documents about the anti-Catholic targeting. He released texts exchanged in 2021 between two prosecutors for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
The same prosecutors later joined special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation and prosecution of President Trump.
The texts date back to the weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, when the Justice Department began an unprecedented investigation to prosecute people who were on the Capitol grounds or inside the building that day.
In a February 2021 text, Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston wrote to a colleague that she had spotted nuns “near the oath keepers” in a New York Times photo of the Capitol riot.
“I would like to take a special assignment of finding and prosecuting them,” she wrote to J.P. Cooney, then chief of the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Fraud, Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section.
Mr. Cooney said he had also seen the photo and told Ms. Gaston that he agreed with her.
“I’m with you,” he responded, “although I’d like to prosecute any nun who still wears the head habit.”
Ms. Gaston responded, “hahaha.”
“There was also a catholic priest in there,” Mr. Cooney added to the exchange. “He came to perform exorcisms. He has been suspended by his diocese, it’s somewhere in the Midwest, I think.”
Mr. Cooney announced his candidacy for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District in February. He pitched his bid to voters in a video highlighting his efforts to prosecute the Jan. 6 rioters and the president.
“I prosecuted the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and then Donald Trump himself,” Mr. Cooney said. “One week after he took office again, he fired me. Now I’m running for Congress to defend our democracy and restore the rule of law.”
Judiciary Committee Republicans said the texts were part of a Biden administration pattern of targeting Christians, Catholics in particular.
“Democrats crying foul about ’weaponization of government’ need to look in the mirror,” Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans said in a statement.
Mr. Cooney and Ms. Gaston were dismissed from the Justice Department when Mr. Trump took office in January 2025. They formed a boutique law firm specializing in public integrity counseling, criminal defense, representation in congressional investigations, internal investigations, and courtroom advocacy.
The Washington Times has reached out to Mr. Cooney and Ms. Gaston.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.