Over the last few days, the Department of Justice removed a report from its website that highlighted how “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists.” 

The 2024 report, which has now been archived, is titled, What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, and was produced by the National Institute of Justice, an agency under DOJ. According to The Guardian, the document was still available online as of September 12 but had been taken down on September 13.

The report’s opening paragraph contained one of its most striking conclusions: “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.”

According to a Mediaite report, it also referenced a Department of Homeland Security threat assessment, which found that domestic violent extremists are an “acute threat” and predicted that factors like “COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration, and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue to serve as a justification for violent actions.”

Daniel Malmar, a PhD student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who studies “online extremism, radicalization, and conspiracy beliefs,” first brought attention to the deletion.

Visitors to the DOJ page where the report once appeared were initially met with a message stating that “The Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance. During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

The page now simply displays: “The requested page could not be found.”