Trump Crime Crackdown: FBI Redirected Away From Political Activity to Tackle Actual Crime

Stay on crime. The Justice Department describes the 764 network as a violent extremist group that originated in Texas in 2021. Authorities say appraise on children and teenagers, coercing them to harm themselves and send explicit pictures. Members of the group have also been charged with animal torture. In an exclusive interview with the PA Times this week, FBI director Cash Patel said arrests linked to the network are up almost 500% this year. He is outlining some of the dark crimes of the group that is being accused of. >> These criminals were convincing children to mutilate themselves. And in some cases, unfortunately, more than one, these children ended up committing suicide because they were threatened by the perpetrator that we will go public if you tell anyone. with now with us now to discuss Patel's efforts to go after what he calls the worst of the worst is John L, president of the crimerevention research center. So John, uh, always great to see you. Thank you for joining us here today. U, the 764 network hasn't been around for long, but is carrying out horrific crimes. What do we know about them? >> Well, there [clears throat] Yeah, thanks for having me on again. They're an international online child exploitation uh network, violent crime extremist network. I mean, these guys are pretty horrible. They force their uh child sex victims to literally carve in with a knife uh the name of the people that are holding them onto their skin. Uh it's uh they use all sorts of different threats to try to control people. uh and it's uh the violence that they've engaged in uh with this child exploitation is really stomach turnurning. So Patel says members of the 76 network subscribe to a shared permitted ideology but operate in a decentralized way online. Is it difficult to take down a group like this? What are the methods? Well, I mean, they do have some coordination [clears throat] uh that makes it possible to go and uh take them down if but if you don't have uh a centralized organization there, uh obviously that makes it more difficult to go and do that. But, you know, you just have to go and and make connections and then go and see who they're connected to and see who they're connected to. Uh so, it's a timeconsuming process. Obviously if it's some centrally organized and completely run group once you take out the central area there then uh then the network falls apart but uh so this makes it more difficult. >> So John uh how optimistic are you about the Trump administration making a difference in these networks or groups for example Antifa as well? Are you optimistic um that if the FBI and others keep up this pressure for the entirety of Trump's term that we'll see significant changes in America? I think one can just say in general uh the FBI during the Trump administration is doing its job much more effectively than was done before. Uh so far this year they've had like 30,000 arrests which is like a 100% increase over what the arrests by the FBI were in in 2024. Uh 25,000 of those arrests are for violent crimes. Um, you know, you go through the different numbers there, uh, whether it be child exploitation or other types of, uh, crimes and, uh, the FBI is doing a much much better job than was done beforehand. They've moved resources out of the DC area to places where the crimes are occurring. Uh, they're letting the FBI agents go and go after serious violent crimes. I mean, they've in terms of the 10 people on the 10 most wanted list, uh, the FBI this year has arrested four of them. Uh, that's in less than one year, uh, compared to the four in the top 10 that the FBI arrested during the entire four years of the Biden administration. John, what would you say is the core difference between this administration and the previous administration? If you could put your finger on a key point here, what do you think is making this administration more successful in tackling crime? >> Well, I mean, there are a couple things. One is, as I mentioned, they've moved FBI agents out of kind of the Washington DC office to actually go and deal with crimes around the country. uh you know they've also [clears throat] uh made it so rather than going after kind of political activity I mean the FBI uh spent huge massive resources going after people for attending schoolboard meetings or uh you know talking about spying on uh Catholics who were observing the Latin mass. Uh rather than going after those types of instances, they're going after violent criminals. And so, uh, you know, in in many different ways, they're moving resources to where they need to go if you want to go after violent criminals. >> And John, since this is in the news, uh, about immigration, can I just ask you, is there a correlation between mass migration and, uh, the level of crime? Is there a correlation at all? >> Yeah, I think there's a strong correlation. Look, during the Biden administration, we had record increases in the number of illegal aliens coming into the country. Uh if you include so-called gotaways, uh people that we see coming across the border, uh but don't catch, there are a couple million of those, plus ones that uh were either caught or turned themselves in at the border. We had like 12 million uh during the Biden administration. that doesn't include the unknown number of millions that we didn't see coming across because we had agents were pulled off of monitoring the border. Uh we also during that time had a record percentage increase in violent crime. Uh according to the National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there's a 59% increase in violent crime during the Biden administration. That's much higher than any other 4-year period of time that we've ever recorded. Um, and I think this year we're going to see a drop in violent crime. We're we've obviously seen a drop in murders where right now we're headed towards a record low murder rate in the United States. Um, so you've captured and caught and deported a number of criminal illegal aliens, but it's more than that because criminal illegal aliens don't want to be deported. And so they want to stay off of police the police's radar. And the way to stay off the police's radar is not to go and commit crimes right now. So, not only have we removed many illegal aliens who are criminals, but we've made it risky for even the ones that we haven't caught to go and commit crime. And I think both of those things help reduce the amount of crime by illegal aliens. And I think in a year from now when the data for 2025 uh comes out, we're going to see not only record low murder rates, but we're going to see drops in violent crime rates across the board. >> What are your thoughts on whether, for example, President Trump pausing migration from all third world countries? Um, do you think that's surgical enough? Uh do you think that's going to contribute to a drop in crime just uh across the board pausing migration from third world countries? >> Well, look, I think we have two different types of immigration. We have legal and illegal immigration. I think generally people that have come in for legal immigration tend to be fairly law-abiding. Uh the problem is is with illegal immigrants uh who tend to be committing crime at relatively high rates. Look, you know, as he the countries that he's stopping uh are temporarily pausing uh legal immigration, uh many of these countries are unable to properly help us vet these people coming into the country. And so I my understanding is one of the big reasons for the pause is to try to fix that and make sure that for those who do legally come into the country that we can properly vet them. Uh I don't view that as particularly bad thing. Plus, given the huge number of uh illegal immigrants that we've had come into the country, there's probably some argument to be made to make sure that we properly kind of adjust and deal with those individuals before we let in uh millions more. >> Well, all right, John. I think we can leave the conversation there. It's always great to speak with you. Thank you very much for your time today. >> Thank you very much.