The FBI is lying about violent crimes to help Democrats win the election

The FBI has a major transparency problem. For a year, the media has used the FBI’s estimates of reported crime to claim that crime has declined. When the FBI released its 2023 numbers in September 2024, it failed to mention that it had revised its previous crime data for 2021 and 2022 to hide the increase in 2022 and that there had been a net increase in crime in 2022 and 2023 . Just days before an election in which crime was a major issue, the FBI continues to cover up the audits.

On Thursday, House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., called on the FBI to explain why it covered up the increase, even as Democrats and the media cited the claimed decline to boost their election chances.

In its responses to reporters in recent weeks, the FBI claimed: “The FBI stands behind every one of our Crime in the Nation publications. “In 2022, the estimated violent crime rate decreased 1.7 percent compared to 2021.”

But the FBI’s revised numbers are clear. The FBI originally reported in October 2023 that the number of reported violent crimes fell from 1,253,716 in 2021 to 1,232,428 in 2022 – a 1.7 percent decrease. Figures released later, in September 2023, showed an increase from 1,197,930 in 2021 to 1,256,671 in 2022 – an increase of 4.9 percent. That’s a swing of 6.6 points.

The FBI did not explain the reason for the changed numbers in 2022 in its report or in its responses to the media. Former USA Today editor David Mastio wrote of the FBI’s response to the investigation: “This is what I’ve learned in my decades of covering Washington: When bad news is false, agency press people go out of their way to make it crystal clear .” It is clear that the reports are definitely not true. When bad news is true, the agency’s press people spew a smokescreen and bury you under an avalanche of distractions, or in this case, contradictions.”

The FBI’s unwillingness to explicitly acknowledge what their own data clearly shows provides the legacy media with an excuse not to acknowledge the obvious increase in crime.

(The change in the estimated reported violent crime rate, which adjusts for population changes, is similar, going from a 2.1 percent decrease to a 4.5 percent increase.)

The increase in 2022 is larger than the FBI’s current estimated decrease in reported violence in 2023. The revised figures show that 20,537 more violent crimes were reported in 2023 than in 2021.

The FBI ignored mention of these changes in its September 2024 press release. The FBI report, “Summary of Crime in the Nation,” included a one-sentence footnote on page 11 that vaguely stated: “The 2022 violent crime rate was included in CIUS, 2023, updated.” The footnote did not mention that the numbers had increased. You won’t see the change until you download the FBI’s new crime data and compare it to the file released last year.

“The FBI’s failure to accurately report crime data and be transparent about audits is unacceptable,” Comer’s letter to the FBI said. Comer requested “all documents and communications between the FBI and the White House related to the 2021, 2022 and 2023 Crime in the Nation statistics.”

Better data

The FBI doesn’t simply count the number of crimes reported to the police. Some police authorities only partially report their data, others do not report any data. The FBI does not believe that these departments have not committed crimes; it makes assumptions, and the way in which it does so may change.

However, there is better crime data than the FBI. It is important to distinguish reported crime from overall crime.

We have known for decades that most crimes are not reported to the police. That’s why the U.S. Department of Justice launched the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which asks 240,000 people each year whether they have been victims of crime. The NCVS represents a measure of overall crime that includes both reported and unreported crime.

The NCVS 2023 results, released in mid-September, tell a very different story. From 2019, pre-Covid, to 2023, NCVS recorded a 19 percent increase in rape, robbery and aggravated assault. There was an incredible 55.4 percent increase over the course of the Biden administration alone, although there were many issues unique to 2020 due to Covid.

The media and Democrats have focused exclusively on the FBI data, presumably because it shows the desired pattern in crime. But as the FBI secretly revised its data, the corporate media refused to publish reports, saying the headlines they had published last year were false.

The politicization of the FBI helps Democrats make these claims.