US DOJ Removes Study Showing Rightwing Attacks Exceed Leftwing

The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice has removed a study show­ing that right-wing attacks far exceed those by left­wing extrem­ists. On 17 Sep­tem­ber 2025, The Hill report­ed that the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice qui­et­ly took down a 2024 study detail­ing the dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed homi­cides com­mit­ted by far-right extrem­ists. The arti­cle begins:

The Jus­tice Depart­ment qui­et­ly removed from its web­site a study show­ing far-right extrem­ists were respon­si­ble for the bulk of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed deaths — a move that comes as the GOP seeks to back claims from Pres­i­dent Trump that the “rad­i­cal left” pos­es a greater dan­ger than the right wing. The 2024 study, in which sev­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice researchers reviewed Nation­al Insti­tute of Jus­tice data, found far more instances of deaths cred­it­ed to right-wing groups. The study was still avail­able on the Jus­tice Depart­ment web­site last week, but a researcher on extrem­ism post­ed on social media that it had been removed in the days after the killing of right-wing activist Char­lie Kirk.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5507682-doj-removes-far-right-extremism-study/

Key Points

• DOJ removed a study show­ing far-right extrem­ists caused over 500 deaths since 1990, far more than left-wing attackers.
• The study cit­ed online rad­i­cal­iza­tion and social media rein­force­ment as major accel­er­ants of extrem­ist ideology.
• The removal fol­lowed polit­i­cal pres­sure and came just after the killing of right-wing activist Char­lie Kirk.
• Trump has blamed the left for extrem­ism, con­tra­dict­ing mul­ti­ple stud­ies includ­ing those by Cato and the FBI.

Trump Administration Efforts to Control Public Narrative

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has increas­ing­ly deployed exec­u­tive actions and insti­tu­tion­al changes that align with strate­gies of infor­ma­tion con­trol, includ­ing remov­ing or sup­press­ing incon­ve­nient stud­ies, clos­ing dis­clo­sure or counter‑disinformation offices, and direct­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels to favor cer­tain nar­ra­tives. GIOR has doc­u­ment­ed instances such as the dis­man­tling of fed­er­al­ly fund­ed media plat­forms, par­tic­u­lar­ly how Voice of Amer­i­ca oper­a­tions were gut­ted, and the issuance of new direc­tives lim­it­ing U.S. diplo­mat­ic crit­i­cism over­seas, includ­ing a cable by Sec­re­tary of State Rubio restrict­ing com­men­tary on for­eign elec­tion legit­i­ma­cy..

Exter­nal evi­dence shows that the State Department’s office tasked with coun­ter­ing for­eign dis­in­for­ma­tion (R/FIMI) was closed, and that the DOJ removed a study on far‑right extrem­ist vio­lence short­ly after polit­i­cal pres­sure, sug­gest­ing a pat­tern in which data or insti­tu­tions that chal­lenge the administration’s pre­ferred nar­ra­tives are marginalized.

Exter­nal References:
1. State Depart­ment shuts down dis­in­for­ma­tion counter office
2. DOJ qui­et­ly removes study show­ing far‑right attacks out­pace left
3. Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Manip­u­lat­ed Immi­gra­tion Data

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.