Christopher O'Leary
Role at the time: Former senior FBI official and MS NOW contributor
Response to this claim
The FBI's count of violent crime arrests under Kash Patel includes arrests made by state and local police and other federal agencies when an FBI employee was present, which the bureau did not count as its own before.
“Kash Patel is actively dismantling decades of statistical integrity just to feed a political narrative”
MS NOW analysis of Justice Department case data shared by Justice Connection, a group of former DOJ and FBI employees. It reports that Patel's count of 54,000 violent crime arrests includes arrests made by state and local police and other federal agencies when an FBI employee was present, and that the FBI referred 15 percent fewer criminal cases for federal prosecution than in the same period of the Biden administration. It carries the FBI's statements in response and comments from former FBI officials and crime researchers.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
The case asks whether the FBI's arrest figures under Patel count arrests made by other agencies. O'Leary says the bureau is taking credit for other agencies' arrests and criticizes Patel for it, so we used condemns.