FBI quietly revises data, reveals crime has increased, debunking ABC David Muir's 'fact check' of Trump during debate

The FBI has quietly revised its 2022 crime data, which previously indicated a 2.1 percent decline in violent crime—a statistic used by Democrats to highlight a reduction in crime under the Biden administration. 

A report by RealClearInvestigations (RCI) revealed that the FBI’s revised data shows violent crime in 2022 actually increased by 4.5 percent. This revision encompasses a variety of violent crimes, including murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. According to RCI, the FBI briefly noted the update on its website but did not explicitly mention that the revised numbers reflected an increase in crime. The revision is only noticeable after downloading the FBI’s crime data file and comparing it to the unrevised figures released last year.

Despite releasing the revised data over three weeks ago, the FBI has not acknowledged or explained the significant revision. Carl Moody, a professor at the College of William & Mary who specializes in studying crime, pointed out that such a large adjustment is unusual.

“I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022,” Moody told RCI. “There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than one percentage point. The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.”

The updated statistics reveal 80,029 more violent crimes in 2022 compared to the previous year. This includes an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults.

RCI also noted that the FBI’s crime statistics are not a simple count of reported crimes. The bureau uses estimates by extrapolating data from police departments, and it also makes estimates for cities that fail to report their crime figures.

“The [FBI’s] processes, such as how it tries to ‘estimate’ unreported figures, has long been a black box, even to the Bureau of Justice Statistics – the Department of Justice’s actual statistical agency,” explained Jeffrey Anderson, a former head of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The BJS also releases its own crime report called the National Crime Victimization Survey, which determined there to be a rise in violent crime victimizations in 2022. The survey, unlike the FBI data, also accounts for unreported crimes. 

This revelation comes as the Biden-Harris administration continues to highlight what it claims are record declines in crime. In September, the White House issued a statement from Vice President Kamala Harris celebrating the so-called “record declines in crime.”

“Today’s new data submitted to the FBI confirms that our dedicated efforts and collaborative partnerships with law enforcement are working; Americans are safer now than when we took office. Last year, we saw the largest ever one-year decrease in the homicide rate, which now stands 16 percent below its 2020 level. Violent crime is at a near 50-year low. Our progress is continuing this year and builds on substantial decreases during the previous years of our administration,” Harris said in the statement. 

During the presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee said that crime in the US is “through the roof.” When moderator David Muir attempted to fact-check Trump, saying that the FBI has claimed overall violent crime is “coming down in this country,” Trump responded by claiming the FBI was “defrauding statements.”

“They didn't include the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud. Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud,” Trump said at the time.