AOops, the FBI was caught surreptitiously “reviewing” crime statistics. The FBI’s furtive edits of their 2022 crime statistics showed that violent crime did not decrease by 2.1% as they originally claimed, but actually increased by 4.5%. That’s a net increase in violent crime of 6.6 percent over the numbers originally reported by the FBI. That’s quite a difference.

The public would never know about the dramatic increase in violent crime if it weren’t for that diligence of RealClearInvestigations (RCI). Their researchers noticed a seemingly innocuous note on the FBI website, “2022 Violent Crime Rate Updated for CIUS, 2023.” Intrigued, investigators went to the website to find out what the updated FBI statistics revealed. They were surprised when they compared the new data with the statistics the FBI had reported earlier.

The revised figures showed 80,029 more violent crimes than previously reported. The new data set showed thousands more rapes, murders, robberies and aggravated assaults than the FBI had reported:

• 7,780 more rapes
• 1,699 more murders
• 33,459 more robberies
• 37,091 aggravated assaults
• Another 54,216 motor vehicle thefts

How could the FBI miss 1,699 murders? The bodies in the morgue are hard to miss, but the FBI managed to overlook them. It amazes us that over 80,000 violent crimes have been missed by the nation’s “first law enforcement agency.” (READ MORE: Lies, damned lies and crime statistics)

Former FBI officials are dismayed by the handling of crime data. Former FBI Assistant Director Mark Morgan he wrote in Washington Examiner that the previous FBI report was “unreliable at best and misleading at worst.”

Carl Moody, yr economy teacher at College of William and Mary studying criminology, said“The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.” I’m not kidding!

You’d think a review showing such a big increase in violent crime would be a major story. However, the FBI has made no public announcement regarding this dramatic escalation in violent crime. In fact, the FBI since September press release promoting a downward trend in violent crime is still on their site – uncorrected.

This fits a disturbing pattern. Democrats claim that crime is falling in the United States and cite FBI statistics to support their argument. Democrats are using the original flawed FBI report to accuse Republicans of spreading “disinformation” when they claim violent crime is on the rise.

This could almost be considered election interference because the FBI released this bogus report in the middle of a presidential campaign, thus giving the Democrats the headlines they wanted. USA Today, reporting on the now debunked statistics, he wrote“Violent crime fell for third consecutive year in 2023, including murder and rape.” And Vox sounded“The crime spree is over, but Republicans can’t give up.”

Seemingly almost on purpose, the now debunked FBI figures were used against Trump during the presidential debate. ABC’s David Muir interrupted Trump and challenge his claim that the crime was “through the roof”. Muir said, “FBI data shows that overall violent crime rates have actually declined in recent years.”

Because of the RCI investigation, we now know that David Muir was wrong and Trump was right. However, ABC did not admit its error or apologize for misleading its viewers.

For several years, the left has been telling us that violent crime is down, despite the chaos we see on the news every night. According to the government, we cannot trust what we see. In the words of comedian Chico Marx: “Who will you believe, me or your lying eyes?”

“Our lying eyes” see gangs of robbers running into shopsmashing shop windows, taking expensive items and then running into waiting cars. We see immigrants beating and hitting police officers on the street violent criminals released with without bail which is committed further more crimesNational Guard deployed to protect passengers on New York subwaySouth American gangs taking over apartment buildings and terrorizing residents of COLORADO and Texasand young women raped and killed by criminal illegal immigrants – immigrants that the Biden-Harris administration has allowed into our country.

But the Democrats and their friends in the media tell us we’re wrong. That crime is not increasing, despite what we see.

Other agencies are not innocent of enlightening the American public either. Bureaucrats at the Department of Labor used the same two-step revisionist reporting as the FBI. They reported large increases in job creation only to later revise these numbers down.

Similar to the FBI’s crime statistics, the Department of Labor’s adjustments are huge. USA Today reported“The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday revised its estimate of total employment in March 2024 by 818,000, the largest such downgrade in 15 years. This effectively means there were 818,000 fewer jobs than originally thought from April 2023 to March 2024.” So the Department of Labor misled the public into believing that the US was doing much better economically than it actually was.

And this is not a one time occurrence. Virtually every jobs report in the past two years has overestimated the number of jobs created, only to later adjust them downward. In other words, initial reports almost always overstate the number of jobs — garnering favorable headlines — but later, without fanfare, the Labor Department adjusts them downward. Isn’t it amazing that 85 percent of the time the errors work in favor of the current administration?

Light us with gas! Gaslighting is an insidious psychological manipulation in which the perpetrators work to deceive someone and force them to question their mind and memory. It is very troubling that it is our own government that uses such tactics to make us doubt what we see and experience. Don’t fall for their subtle schemes. Trust your own eyes and ears.

Russian author and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s observations about similar tactics used by Communist Russia are applicable here:

We know they’re lying, they know they’re lying, they really know we know they’re lying, we also know they know we know they’re lying, of course they know we know for sure they know we know they’re lying too, but they’re still lying . In our country, lying has become not only a moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.

The good people, the Democrats and the FBI are obviously stupid. I think they miscalculated and we can prove them wrong on November 5th.

Pat Nolan is director emeritus of the Nolan Center for Justice at the CPAC Foundation.

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