Image: Members of the White House Task Force for Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias Image Credit: @WhiteHouse / X
Submitted by Jennifer Hay [founder of Knoxville Nobility] to the White House Task Force for Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias and to The Tennessee Conservative as an Op-ed –
To the White House Task Force on Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias, established by President Donald J. Trump:
My name is Jennifer Hay, and I am a journalist from Knoxville, Tennessee. I wish to submit a case to this Task Force for consideration—that of Mark Thomas Reno, a pro-life Catholic man from Jefferson City, TN. This is a brief summary of what happened to him. I affirm that everything in this summary is true and supported by available records.
On April 26, 2022, Mark Reno was surreptitiously recorded by the FBI at a pro-life event in Knoxville. During this recorded conversation, Reno told the undercover agent that he had been at the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Subsequently, the FBI began to surveil Reno; they placed tracking devices on his vehicles on June 19, 2022.
On July 18, 2022, the FBI arrested Reno at his home in Jefferson City. They alleged that, after attending Mass at Holy Ghost Catholic Church on Sunday, July 3, 2022, Reno drove by the John J. Duncan Federal Building and fired three shots at its windows with a rifle.
However, there is scant evidence that anyone fired shots at the John J. Duncan Federal Building on July 3, 2022. No one heard gunshots. The Knoxville Police Department has no record of a shooting. The inner panes of glass were unbroken. A Federal Protective Service report about the incident clearly stated that no bullets, fragments, or casings were found. Moreover, another FPS report, dated June 18, 2022, documented another broken window on the same building only two weeks earlier. The FPS investigator for the June 18 incident surmised that the window had been impacted by debris from nearby construction.
Prosecutors Kyle Boynton and Casey Arrowood withheld the FPS incident reports from Mark Reno and his attorney, Sarah Olesiuk.
Because exculpatory records were withheld from Reno, Magistrate Judge Jill McCook ordered him detained until trial. Although he was in reasonably good health when he was arrested, he died in federal custody, without autopsy, on August 15, 2022—just 28 days after his arrest.
Shortly after his death, the FBI accused Reno, via a warrant for civil-asset forfeiture, of setting the fire which destroyed Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood on December 31, 2021. That Reno was the Planned Parenthood arsonist remains the prevailing narrative from media outlets, but it is demonstrably false. The fire was set from within the building by a man who was much thinner than Reno.
Let it be noted that one of Reno’s prosecutors, Kyle Boynton, has a record of aggressively prosecuting pro-life Christians. He prosecuted the pro-life protestors from Tennessee whom President Trump pardoned and cited in the order which established this Task Force. About Boynton’s prosecution of the Mt. Juliet protestors, President Trump wrote: “Those convicted included a Catholic priest and 75-year-old grandmother, as well as an 87-year-old woman and a father of 11 children who were arrested 18 months after praying and singing hymns outside an abortion facility in Tennessee as a part of a politically motivated prosecution campaign by the Biden Administration. I rectified this injustice on January 23, 2025, by issuing pardons in these cases.”
We need practical assistance from this Task Force. Among other things, we need help getting FBI records related to Mark Reno. We have a pending FOIA lawsuit, but lawsuits take time, and our need for these records is urgent.
The most important record we seek is the surreptitious FBI recording of Reno, made on April 26, 2022 (FOIPA Request No.: 1589943-000). We also need all FBI photographs of Mark Reno’s red GMC Sierra pick-up truck to compare with images of the arsonist’s truck captured by Planned Parenthood’s security cameras on the morning of December 31, 2021.
Please advise us on how to submit Mark Reno’s case, along with supporting records, for consideration by this Task Force.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Hay
