DOJ Deletes Study Linking Most Domestic Terrorism to the Far Right
This isn't an isolated incident. It's part of a broader purge of federal websites during Trump’s second term.
By Brian Daitzman
The Department of Justice has removed content highlighting a decades-long trend: far-right extremists have carried out the overwhelming majority of ideologically motivated killings in the United States. The removal comes days after the assassination of conservative media figure Charlie Kirk, amid a renewed push by the Trump administration to blame the “radical left” for political violence.
On September 16, 2025, visitors to the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) encountered a banner stretched across its websites: “The Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders. … During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable.” The message was bureaucratic in tone but sweeping in effect. As Emanuel Maiberg reported in 404 Media, it marked the quiet removal of federal research that had long been accessible to the public.
Among the publications taken offline was a National Institute of Justice–funded study documenting that far-right extremists have carried out the majority of ideologically motivated killings in the United States since 1990. The study’s conclusion was not controversial in academic circles; it aligned with decades of evidence from the Extremist Crime Database and from watchdog groups such as the Anti-Defamation League. What was unusual was its disappearance.
The timing made the decision even more consequential. The study vanished just days after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, an event the Trump administration used to sharpen its argument that the “radical left” is driving political violence. The contrast was stark: while the data showed a persistent pattern of far-right lethality, the government was simultaneously scrubbing its websites and amplifying a narrative that cast blame in the opposite direction.
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Among the material no longer reachable was research funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), long a sponsor of work by criminologist Steven Chermak and others who study extremist violence. Their Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) has consistently documented that far-right extremists account for far more killings than their far-left counterparts. One NIJ-published article put the point bluntly: far-right violence, it concluded, “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”
Independent evidence supports the same pattern. A 2021 ECDB-based study found that, between 1990 and 2020, far-right extremists were responsible for the overwhelming majority of ideologically motivated homicides. And the Anti-Defamation League reported that in 2023, every extremist-related murder in the United States was committed by far-right actors.
The removal comes at a charged political moment.
In the days after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a public event in Utah, Donald Trump blamed the “radical left” for political violence and promised a forceful response. Attorney General Pam Bondi initially spoke broadly about targeting extremist rhetoric but later clarified in media appearances that federal enforcement would apply only to unlawful threats and incitement. Vice President JD Vance, guest-hosting Kirk’s podcast in the aftermath, urged aggressive measures against those celebrating the killing, turning a moment of mourning into a proving ground for partisan resolve.
Outside government, allies reinforced the theme. Elon Musk, whose company owns X and its AI assistant, Grok, pledged adjustments after the system highlighted existing research showing that right-wing political violence has historically been more frequent and deadlier than violence from the left. That body of scholarship, built over decades, underscored the tension between the administration’s rhetoric and the empirical record. The contrast is stark.
This reframing of extremism marks a departure from the federal consensus of the last quarter-century, which has repeatedly identified far-right militancy as the sharper danger. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, officials spoke in bipartisan tones about the risks of anti-government violence. In the years after 9/11, white-supremacist groups remained high on the security radar.
Even under Trump’s first administration, the Department of Homeland Security’s 2020 assessment described racially and ethnically motivated extremists—mostly on the right—as the nation’s “most persistent and lethal” domestic threat.
Scholars caution that shifting the spotlight can distort public understanding. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an extremism researcher at American University, has argued that when political leaders selectively focus on one side of the spectrum, they undermine trust in the agencies tasked with keeping the country safe and risk emboldening extremist groups.
Moments of crisis have long been leveraged to redraw the boundaries of legitimacy. Richard Nixon used the language of law and order to denounce protestors; George W. Bush invoked the “war on terror” to consolidate national unity and presidential power. Trump’s rhetoric fits that lineage but also departs from it, casting blame in ways that cut against the weight of evidence. By turning Kirk’s death into an ideological fulcrum, he signals not just how this White House interprets violence but how it intends to shape the nation’s memory of it. The question is whether Americans will accept that framing—or remember the data it seeks to eclipse.
Kirk’s Assassination Brings Trump’s Authoritarianism into Even Clearer Focus
I have long argued that Donald Trump and today’s Republican Party are the greatest threat this nation has ever faced. Greater than Nazi Germany; greater than the Soviet Union; greater than al-Qaida.
The Politics of Erasure
The disappearance of NIJ-backed material is not an isolated episode. It forms part of a broader purge of federal websites during Trump’s second term. For researchers, the question is no longer whether far-right violence constitutes the dominant domestic extremist threat — the evidence is overwhelming. The question now is whether the government is willing to say so.
Brian Daitzman is the Editor of The Intellectualist. Read the original article here.
References
404 Media: DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing/
Bureau of Justice Assistance – Program List
https://bja.ojp.gov/program/listNIJ Research: What It Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism
https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorismSTART Archive: NIJ Domestic Terrorism Research
https://www.start.umd.edu/publication/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorismPNAS Study: Political Extremism and Violence in the U.S. (Jasko et al., 2022)
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2122593119Far-Left vs. Far-Right Fatal Violence (Duran, 2021)
https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versus-far-right-fatal-violence-an-empirical-assessment-of-the-prevalence-of-ideologically-motivated-homicides-in-the-united-statesDOJ Inspector General – Domestic Violent Extremism Strategy (2023)
https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/23-078.pdfBrennan Center: DOJ Must Reveal Real Scope of Domestic Terrorism
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/justice-department-must-reveal-real-scope-domestic-terrorismAP News: Charlie Kirk Shot Dead in Utah (Sept 2025)
https://apnews.com/article/f541df08a936e06497ee2342296bc398AP News: Suspect Identified, Investigation Updates
https://apnews.com/article/5b21388dd7c84f887df0a8c01cb4bf2cABC News: Charlie Kirk Killed During Utah Event; JD Vance Response
https://abcnews.go.com/US/charlie-kirk-shot-event-utah-university-jd-vance/story?id=125451514Gizmodo: Musk Says He’ll ‘Fix’ Grok After AI Cites Right-Wing Violence Data
https://gizmodo.com/elon-says-hes-working-to-fix-grok-after-ai-disagrees-with-him-on-right-wing-violence-2000617420Axios: ADL Finds Extremist-Related Murders Fell in 2023
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/20/extremist-related-murders-fell-in-2023-adl
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Who didn’t see that coming. The Southern Poverty Law Center still tracks the extremist organizations. Great organization to follow.
Innocuous or consequential, everything is a diversion from the question of the Epstein files.