The office of FBI Director Kash Patel ripped Gov. Gavin Newsom over accusations he misrepresented crime data to show that Democratic policies drove a decline in the nationwide murder rate.
The spat began after Patel shared a chart on X illustrating a drastic drop in US homicides, with a 125-year low projected for 2026, captioning the post: “Leadership matters.”
Newsom responded, claiming that “this chart ends before you and Trump took office in 2025” while sharing a photo of President Biden in the Oval Office.
“Thank you, President Biden for the historic drop in homicide rates!” the post added.
The FBI immediately fired back, noting that the data showed a decline in the murder rate for 2025 — covering the first year of President Trump’s second term in the White House.
“Governor Newsom’s team is trying to spin data they clearly don’t understand,” FBI spokesman Ben Williamson exclusively told The Post.
“The Council on Criminal Justice report, published in January 2026 and covering 2025, shows a historic drop in crime. That didn’t happen because of the soft-on-crime agenda he pushed, it’s happening because those policies are being reversed.”
Diana Crofts-Pelayo, deputy director of communications for Newsom, issued a statement saying, “Trump and his goons falsely take credit for Joe Biden’s crime reduction. We’re sorry the facts hurt your feelings.”
The Council on Criminal Justice found that homicides fell sharply in 2025 across major U.S. cities, with the average murder rate dropping 21% compared to 2024 — a reduction of 922 killings in the 35 cities studied.
Compared to 2019, homicide rates in 2025 were down about 25%. And relative to the pandemic-era peak in 2021, when the rate hit 18.6 per 100,000 people, the 2025 rate of 10.4 represents a 44% decrease.
The downward trend was consistent throughout the year. Homicides fell 18% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, and dropped 24% in the second half of the year.
