The fact-checking of ABC’s Trump debate is aging poorly as the FBI quietly revises violent crime statistics

An ABC News presidential debate fact check has gone badly out of date after the FBI quietly made a stunning correction to violent crime rates in the United States

In last month’s political showdown between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump pointed to the rise in violent crime to weaken the Biden-Harris administration’s record.

“Crime has skyrocketed here despite the fraudulent statements they made,” Trump said. “Crime in this country is through the roof.”

Moments later, ABC debate moderator David Muir attempted to fact-check the Republican candidate.

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“President Trump, as you know, the FBI says that overall violent crime in this country is declining,” Muir responded.

Trump immediately defended himself.

“Sorry,” Trump said to Muir. “You made fraudulent statements. They didn’t take into account the cities with the worst crime. They didn’t take into account the cities with the worst crime. It was a scam. Just as their figure of 818,000 jobs they claimed to have created turned out to be a fraud.”

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A recent FBI audit appears to support Trump. After reporting a 2.1% drop in violent crime in 2022, the FBI now admits there was actually a 4.5% increase.

According to crime and data expert John Lott, the new figures reflect a net increase of 80,029 violent crimes in 2022 compared to 2021. He noted that under the violent crime umbrella, there were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 serious assaults that year.

According to Grabien transcripts, Muir has not yet acknowledged the FBI’s statistic change on “World News Tonight.”

ABC presidential debate co-moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were heavily criticized for constantly checking on former President Trump but refusing to correct Vice President Kamala Harris. (ABC News)

ABC News did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

ABC News sparked widespread anger when debate moderators repeatedly fact-checked Trump while leaving all of Harris’ claims unchallenged.

Even the liberal writers of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” took a swipe at the network’s rival for its “biased” debate.

“I was hoping that the takeaway from the debate I moderated would be my striking good looks, but unfortunately the question was whether or not I was biased against the Democrats, which…well,” said cast member Andrew Dismukes’ Muir to the audience, sparking laughter from the audience.

ABC debate moderators spark anger over aggressive fact-checking of Trump and easy treatment of Harris

The FBI quietly admitted there was an increase in violent crime across the US after reporting a decline in 2022. (Getty Images)

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Trump himself has repeatedly criticized Muir and ABC News, accusing the network of breaking the “deal” he made with the Trump campaign before the debate.

“You don’t know this, but we had a deal with ABC that there would be no corrections whatsoever and they violated the deal. Why? Because they are bad people and fake news,” Trump said on September 26. “So he did it to me many times during the debate. He violated the deal. That’s the deal, because you can take anything and try to make stories out of it. We had a deal where that wouldn’t happen. You could do that.” Whatever you wanted once the debate was over, but he did it, completely violating our agreement. And a lot of people were standing right over there [as he looked toward his staff] will tell you exactly what it was, will show you exactly what it was. David Muir has lost all credibility.

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.