No, Obama did not remove 500,000 pedophiles from a background check database | Fact check

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
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The claim: Obama removed 500,000 pedophiles from a background check database

A May 1 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of a 2018 news article with the headline "Obama Removed 500,000 Pedophiles From Background Check Database."

The article's subhead reads, "Barack Obama ordered the FBI to remove over 500,000 names of potential murderers and pedophiles from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, acting FBI director David Bowdich testified Wednesday."

The post generated over 100 likes in less than a week. Similar posts have spread widely on Instagram.

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Our rating: False

This is wrong on multiple counts: This action wasn't taken under Obama, and it wasn't related to a group of pedophiles. About 500,000 people were removed from an FBI database after the Justice Department narrowed the definition of a “fugitive from justice.” But it took place after President Donald Trump took office and involved people with arrest warrants for all kinds of crime.

FBI removed fugitives' names from background check database under the Trump administration

As evidence, the story cites a 2017 Washington Post article that says about 500,000 individuals were removed from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System database, which collects data on whether a person is prohibited at the federal or state level from possessing or receiving a firearm.

But the removal took place after Trump took office, and it involved people who were subject to warrants for all kinds of crimes – not just pedophilia, Lindsay Nichols, policy director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told USA TODAY in an email.

The controversy centered around who was considered a “fugitive from justice,” a category in the database that disqualifies prospective gun purchasers, according to a 2016 report from the Department of Justice. The FBI maintained that the category should broadly apply to anyone with a warrant, whereas the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives argued for a narrow definition to include only those with warrants who crossed state lines.

The DOJ sided with the ATF before Trump took office in 2017, the Post reported. After Trump was inaugurated, the DOJ further narrowed the definition to only include individuals who fled a state to avoid criminal prosecution or to avoid providing testimony in a criminal proceeding and “are subject to a current or imminent criminal prosecution or testimonial obligation,” according to a February 2017 FBI memo.

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The memo also directed the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division to remove all the names that had already been under the “fugitives from justice” category in the database in order to re-evaluate the offenders under the new definition.

About 500,000 fugitives were taken out of the background check database, according to Daniel Webster, a gun policy expert at Johns Hopkins University.

The database showed a total of 518,670 individuals listed in the fugitives from justice category at the end of 2016, according to an archive. The Post reported that before the FBI memo was released, about 500,000 people were identified as fugitives from justice, and that number dropped to 788 in February 2017.

About 430,000 of the individuals removed were from Massachusetts and were later added back to the database under the “state prohibitor” category, since Massachusetts state law prohibits fugitives from purchasing firearms, the Post reported.

The post’s claim about what the FBI director said is also wrong.

The story references an exchange during a 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the Justice Department dropped 500,000 names from the fugitives from justice category in the database because it was uncertain whether those fugitives crossed state lines. She then asked Bowdich to describe why this determination was made by the Justice Department.

In response, he said:

"That was a decision that was made under the previous administration. It was the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel that reviewed the law and believed that it needed to be interpreted so that if someone was a fugitive in a state, there had to be indications that they had crossed state lines. Otherwise they were not known to be a fugitive under the law.”

He never said Obama ordered the FBI to remove the names.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

The Associated Press also debunked the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, Obama didn't remove 500,000 pedophiles from FBI database