The US Department of Justice has quietly removed a report from its website that concluded far-right extremists have carried out far more deadly attacks in America than any other domestic extremist group. The removal happened just days after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot.
The archived report, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, disappeared from the DOJ website sometime between September 11 and 12, according to investigative journalist Jason Paladino, who first uncovered the story. Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA and a close ally of Donald Trump, was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10.
The report began with a stark finding: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged with Kirk’s murder, and prosecutors have announced they will seek the death penalty. Despite the NIJ report’s conclusions, Trump and other Republicans have pointed the finger at “radical left” groups for the shooting.
The National Institute of Justice study was built on decades of research and is one of the most extensive government analyses of domestic terrorism trends. It concluded that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States” and that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”
Where the report once appeared, the DOJ now says it is “reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent executive orders,” according to 404Media. The page has since been taken down entirely.
Independent findings back up the NIJ’s work. Research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies examined 893 terrorist plots between 1994 and 2020 and concluded: “Rightwing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994.”
Heidi Beirich, executive vice-president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, testified before Congress in 2023 that “data on acts of political violence clearly shows that it is the far right that is driving terrorism in the US, including targeting and, in certain cases, murdering law enforcement.” She added, “That is not to say there is no violence from far-left actors. It is just simply not on the scale or as deadly as what is coming from far-right actors.”
Kirk had turned Turning Point USA into a leading conservative youth movement and was a featured speaker at last year’s Republican National Convention. He was in the middle of a campus talk when he was shot.
The Justice Department has so far declined to comment on why the study was removed.
