Speaking during a press conference on Wednesday, October 15, President Donald Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel commented on the state of things in “Operation Summer Heat,” the multi-month operation that began in September and is meant to crack down on criminal groups and networks all over America, particularly in the blue cities that refused to handle them.
According to the president and FBI director, the major operation, which will soon be expanded to San Francisco, has already been a massive success that has led to the arrests of 8,700 arrests of violent criminals by the FBI and has “destroyed or severely disrupted” over 170 organized criminal groups and gangs.
They also noted that 23,000 total violent criminals have been arrested by the FBI since Trump’s inauguration, representing a whopping 86% increase over the arrests by this point in past years. 15,388 such FBI arrests of violent criminals occurred in 2023, by contrast, with just 15,771 in 2022 and 16,864 in 2021.
Commenting on the matter during the press conference, the president noted that the FBI has focused like a laser on “crushing violent crime,” and as such has seen immense success in taking down thousands of criminals. He said, “Over the past few months, FBI offices in all 50 states made crushing violent crime a top enforcement priority, and that’s what they did – rounding up and arresting thousands of the most violent and dangerous criminals.”
Similarly, FBI Director Kash Patel said, during the press conference, that the seven months of hard work that the FBI has so far been able to engage in have been the “best numbers” of crime fighting yet seen in American history. He said, “In just seven months…these are the best numbers for fighting crime in US history. And it’s only seven months in.”
Continuing, the FBI Director commented on the success of Operation Summer Heat, saying, “And to do that, our vehicle to do it, of choice was Operation Summer Heat, which the FBI architected to go after violent criminals. And in just a three-month span, you had 8,700 arrests of violent criminals.”
Giving some examples of what successes the FBI has seen and the metrics by which it is calculating its crime-fighting success, the FBI director explained, “You had 2,200 firearms seized off the streets permanently to safeguard our communities. You had 421 kilograms of fentanyl seized. Just to put that in perspective, that’s enough to kill 55 million Americans alone. You had 45,000 kilograms of cocaine seeds, and thanks to our Department of Justice partners, you had 2,100 indictments in three months from June to September alone.”
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Still not done, Director Patel explained that the FBI has rescued a whopping 5,400 missing children, a move that represents a nearly one-third increase over the Biden Administration’s numbers. Similarly, gang arrests have risen dramatically, with the Trump FBI engaging in 210% more such arrests.
Adding another key detail, Patel noted how the FBI has succeeded in important counter-espionage work, saying, “We have gone after espionage activities against our main counterparts in China, Russia and Iran. In China alone, we’ve had over a 50% increase in espionage arrests alone and prosecutions. In Iran, we have had a 50% increase again in espionage cases. And in Russia, we’ve had a 33% increase in espionage cases alone. When it comes to counterterrorism, year to date, we have 125 arrests this year versus 100 last year.”
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