This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland grew emotional when he invoked his Jewish family background Wednesday after a Republican lawmaker accused an agency under his direction of religious discrimination. 

At a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Republican from New Jersey, pressed Garland about a memo released earlier this year by a whistleblower that showed the FBI was considering using churches for information and surveillance purposes, explicitly targeting groups of Catholics known as “radical traditionalists.” The FBI later withdrew and condemned the documents, 

“Do you agree that traditional Catholics are violent extremists?” Van Drew asked Garland.

Garland, who grew up in the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie with a father and a mother whose immigrant parents fled Russia to escape antisemitism and persecution in the early 1900s, responded with indignation. “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous, so absurd,” Garland said. 

“We were appalled by that memo,” Garland added.

Van Drew repeated the allegations made in the memo and demanded a yes or no answer on whether traditional Catholics are extremists. To which Garland said, “Catholics are not extremists, no.” 

This article was originally published on the Forward.