Jordan demands FBI response to whistleblower allegation on 'padding' data on domestic extremists

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan is demand answers from FBI Director Chris Wray about whistleblower reports alleging the agency is "padding its domestic violent extremist data" by pressuring agents to classify more crimes as being terror-related.

The whistleblowers have told House Republicans that "FBI officials are pressuring agents to reclassify cases as 'domestic violent extremism' even if the cases do not meet the criteria for such a classification," Jordan said in a letter Wednesday to Wray.

"Given the narrative pushed by the Biden Administration that domestic violent extremism is the 'greatest threat' facing our country, the revelation that the FBI may be artificially padding domestic terrorism data is scandalous," the Ohio lawmaker also said.

White supremacists and anti-government militia groups have been singled out by the Biden administration as the "two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat" amid what it says are rising numbers of domestic terror attacks.

"We have received accusations that FBI agents are bolstering the number of cases of DVEs to satisfy their superiors," Jordan continued. "For example, one whistleblower explained that because agents are not finding enough DVE cases, they are encouraged and incentivized to reclassify cases as DVE cases even though there is minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the reclassification."

Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, asked the FBI to provide information from January 2020 to present about domestic violent extremism cases and documents classifying them as such. 

"Politics permeates the FBI. This is a crisis," former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell tweeted about Jordan's letter.