DOJ removed study from website showing most domestic terrorism is right-wing

The U.S. Department of Justice removed a study from its website in September 2025 that showed domestic terrorists most often espouse right-wing beliefs.

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Following the Sept. 10, 2025, fatal shooting of conservative
activist Charlie Kirk, the administration of President Donald Trump threatened to crack down on the "radical left," including by potentially classifying some groups as domestic terrorists.

People on social media critical of the administration pointed out
that it had removed a study from the U.S. Department of Justice website
that showed right-wing domestic terrorism was far more common than
left-wing or Islamist extremist domestic terrorism. One Reddit thread (archived) making the claim received more than 100,000 upvotes, while another (archived) received another 5,000 upvotes. The claim also spread to other social media sites, such as Facebook (archived) and Instagram (archived).

The study, titled, "What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism,"
was published to the Department of Justice's National Institute of
Justice website on Jan. 4, 2024, during the administration of
then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat. The study's text was posted
directly to the website and in a PDF. Both links were archived with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

"In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all
other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. 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," the study's authors wrote in its
first paragraph. "In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42
ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives."

Attempting to go to the same URL on Sept. 17, 2025, redirected to the DOJ Office of Justice Programs, which hosts the NIJ homepage. When trying to access the link to the PDF, the website says that the requested page could not be found. The study also could not be found with a website search for words in the study's title, "domestic terrorism." A Google search for the study's name, narrowed to .gov websites, did not bring up the study, only the PDF link that redirects to the 404 page. Links to the study from other organizations redirected to the same pages.

The Internet Archive's archive history for the study's page
showed the study was still available on the DOJ's website on Sept. 11,
2025. However, by the time it was next saved — around 2 p.m. Eastern
Time Sept. 12 — the study was removed from the website, and its link
redirected to the OJP homepage. Snopes reached out to the Justice
Department, which declined to comment.

The NIJ website maintains a domestic radicalization and terrorism topic page, which includes other research conducted under previous administrations, such as an April 2024 report on the role of social media networks in domestic radicalization. The OJP also has a much-older study on right-wing extremism from 1987 still available on its website.

The removed study's findings line up with other research into the subject. A report from the Cato Institute,
a libertarian think tank, found that excluding 9/11, the majority of
murders in politically motivated terrorist acts in the U.S. since 1975
have been by people with right-wing ideologies. Even when including the
9/11 attacks, which skews the data heavily toward Islamic extremism
being the most common ideology of politically motivated terrorist
attacks, right-wing ideologies were still far more common than left-wing
ideologies in perpetrators of politically motivated terrorist acts.

A University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice study
similarly found it was nearly twice as likely for a violent act of
extremism in the U.S. to be committed by a right-wing extremist than by a
left-wing extremist.

Sources

Chermak, Steven, et al. "What NIJ Research Tells Us about Domestic Terrorism." National Institute of Justice, Department of Justice, 4 Jan. 2024, web.archive.org/web/20250911012550/nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorism. Accessed 17 Sept. 2025.

"Google Search - What NIJ Research Tells Us about Domestic Terrorism Site:.Gov." Google.com, www.google.com/search?q=What+NIJ+Research+Tells+Us+About+Domestic+Terro…. Accessed 17 Sept. 2025.

"Search | National Institute of Justice." Ojp.gov, Department of Justice, nij.ojp.gov/search/results?keys=domestic+terrorism. Accessed 17 Sept. 2025.

"Wayback Machine Archive History for What NIJ Research Tells Us about Domestic Terrorism." Archive.org, web.archive.org/web/20250000000000. Accessed 17 Sept. 2025.

By Emery Winter

Emery Winter is based in Charlotte, North Carolina,
and previously worked for TEGNA'S VERIFY national fact-checking team.
They enjoy sports and video games.