The Diocese of Covington that oversees the Covington Catholic High School released a report about a viral altercation between students and a Native American agitator last month that proves Catholic officials overreacted by prematurely condemning the teens.

A viral clip of MAGA hat wearing Covington Catholic students in a standoff with Native American agitator Nathan Phillips sparked allegations of racism and taunting that were later debunked by longer, unedited video. Amid the initial controversy – as Phillips made a series of false accusations on CNN and other liberal media sites – the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic officials denounced students’ behavior as “opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.”

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“We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general,” the statement read.

Once it became apparent the viral video was a hate hoax framed to malign the Catholic students, Covington officials began to backtrack and hired private investigators to dig into the situation.

The Bishop of Covington, Roger Foys, alleged last month he was “bullied and pressured into making a statement prematurely” and claimed the investigation “is important for us to gather the facts that will allow us to determine what corrective actions, if any, are appropriate.”

Foys sent a letter to parents this week announcing the results of the independent investigation, which was conducted by Greater Cincinnati Investigation, Inc.

The effort employed four licensed investigators involved in 240 hours of interviews with students chaperones and third-party witnesses, as well as the review of about 50 hours of video, The Washington Post reports.

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The students were in D.C. to participate in the March for Life rally when they were confronted by racist Black Hebrew Israelites at the Lincoln Memorial, though there was no evidence the students chanted “Build a Wall,” as some alleged, according to the report.

To counter the Black Hebrew Israelites, chaperones with the students gave them permission to drown out the racists with a school cheer. That’s when Phillips approached the students, who were “confused” by him banging a Native American drum and chanting during the melee. The investigators recovered zero evidence of “racist of offensive statements by students to Mr. Phillips,” though some students performed a “tomahawk chop,” according to the report.

At one point, a chaperone told the students if “they engaged in a verbal exchange with the Black Hebrew Israelites, they would receive detention when returning to school,” the Tribune reports.

Investigators also noted that the Covington students did not come to D.C. with MAGA hats, but rather purchased them at the rally, just as other Covington students had purchased Obama-themed “hope” hats in the past.

WKYT published Covington Catholic’s letter to parents, sent Monday.

“I am pleased to inform you that my hope and expectation … that the results of our inquiry into the events of 18 January at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. would ‘exonerate our students so that they can move forward with their lives’ has been realized,” Foys wrote to parents this week.

“Our inquiry, conducted by a third party firm that has no connection with Covington Catholic High School or the Diocese of Covington, has demonstrated that our students did not instigate the incident that occurred at the Lincoln Memorial,” he wrote.

Essentially, Covington Catholic students were telling the truth about the situation and were vilified by far-left activists, celebrities, high-profile politicians and officials at their own school for no reason. Like virtually all news outlets that promoted the hate hoax, Covington officials completely ignored the role Phillips and the Black Hebrew Israelites played in the smear campaign.

“In these past several weeks since the original video went viral two well-worn and oft-used adages have come to mind: Seeing is believing and Perception is reality,” Foys lectured parents in the letter. “The immediate worldwide reaction to the initial video led most everyone to believe that our students had initiated the incident and the perception of those few minutes of video became reality.

“In truth, taking everything into account, our students were placed in a situation that was at once bizarre and even threatening,” he wrote. “Their reaction to the situation was, given the circumstances, expected and one might even say laudatory.”

Foys did not apologize to parents for rushing to judgement, which undoubtedly helped fuel the deluge of death threats directed at students in the wake of the hate hoax.