Federal bureaucrats don’t get a lot of love, but there is at least one — or perhaps a small group — at the FBI who deserve your thanks. Why? Did you see the story about the FBI revising its crime data?
The FBI’s original release of 2022 crime statistics showed a 2.1% decline in violent crime when compared to 2021. This figure never seemed right and was widely questioned, but FBI data is presumed authoritative. Former President Donald Trump often insists crime is rising and the legacy media delighted in throwing the FBI figures back at him.
Whoops. The FBI very quietly released a correction. Crime didn’t fall 2.1%. Violent crime actually rose 4.5%. That’s right, crime rose, just as Trump said. Further, the combined correction of nearly 7%, reversing a 2.1% decline to a 4.5% increase is too large just to be passed off as simple error. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark (Hamlet, Act I, Scene IV).”
Quite properly, most of the attention given to this bombshell is directed at the rise in crime, the validation of Trump’s claims and the perfidy of the FBI.
Consider that last item. The FBI is vital to national security, yet its leadership down through a few layers of the org chart have been revealed repeatedly as bad. They see what’s going on around the country. They see the crime, yet they allowed that obviously flawed report to go out knowing it would benefit whoever became the Democratic nominee.
If Trump wins, then it is time for the trash to meet the broom.
But there’s another aspect of this story. The corrected figures showing a rise in crime came out just a few weeks before the election, hitting the Harris campaign with yet another mighty gut punch. The FBI could have waited until after the election. Heck, they could have waited until next year.
How did this happen? How did the new truth get past FBI leadership?
Somewhere some likely lifer FBI bureaucrat must have learned the truth. Knowing it would surely destroy their career this person may have told their superiors that if the report weren’t revised and released, if the truth didn’t come out through official channels, then they would go to the press with the correct data and the coverup.
Our hero was likely called to multiple meetings by ever-higher-ups to persuade, dissuade and threaten him or her into getting in line. They would have heard variations of “This isn’t how we do things at the FBI” and “This will destroy your career,” and “By the way, how do your kids like Springfield Elementary?”
Plenty of federal bureaucrats are lazy and useless. Sometimes they are in positions where there is just nothing to do and sometimes they are malicious.
It is a big government. There are bad apples in every barrel. As my former boss used to say: “Bureaucrats are like cockroaches. The trouble is not what they eat, but what they get into.”
But there are also plenty of fine professionals just trying to do a good job often in impossible conditions. They can be found in every department, agency and bureau. I’ve even met them at the Infernal Revenue Service, good people struggling to make an incredibly bad system work.
One of those fine professionals is apparently at the FBI. A dedicated stalwart who wouldn’t be bullied, wouldn’t remain silent, who forced the FBI to release the corrected crime statistics before the election. We will likely never know who this person is.
But tonight, when hefting a pint or saying your prayers, speak a few words of thanks that we have such people.
J.D. Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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