FBI's violent-crime arrest figures inflated under Trump administration, report says

MS NOW’s investigation, using public DOJ data supplied by Justice Connection, claims the FBI under Director Kash Patel exaggerated its violent-crime arrest statistics by adding arrests carried out by state, local police and other federal bodies when an FBI agent was involved. Patel has touted a 54,000-arrest figure, a 90 percent increase over the Biden era, yet the bureau actually referred 15 percent fewer cases for federal prosecution and saw a comparable drop in DOJ violent-crime prosecutions.

The report links the statistical inflation to a broader reorientation toward immigration crimes and a reduction in traditional FBI priorities such as terrorism and organized crime. Former senior FBI officials, including Christopher O’Leary and Daniel Brunner, warn that this practice undermines the agency’s historical data integrity. The FBI did not dispute the decline in referrals but attributed it to a nationwide fall in violent crime, a trend that began after the pandemic spike.