FBI Director Kash Patel says the bureau wiped out a DNA backlog that once topped 1.8 million samples, a pile he ties to prior leadership and unsolved crimes.
Patel told Breitbart News the FBI has reduced that backlog to zero in under a year and a half. He joined the Lab Division team over the weekend to mark the milestone.
The samples feed CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System. Investigators use it to compare profiles against DNA from unsolved homicides, mass shootings, and sexual assaults. When those samples sit in a backlog, cases stall.
Patel framed the old pile as more than a paperwork problem. He said it broke the law and blocked the bureau’s work.
In a statement provided to Breitbart News, Patel put the failure on the bureaucracy he inherited.
"This was yet another example of institutionalized bureaucracy from prior leadership that left crimes across America unsolved. When we got here, there had been a backlog nearly 2 million samples, literally breaking statutory requirements and hindering the FBI’s work, and we immediately got to work."
He credited a practical fix, not a press release.
"This FBI dedicated more resources, more equipment, improved IT systems, and used business analytics for DNA processing, and thanks to incredible work from our Lab team the backlog is officially at zero,"
The DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 requires samples from federally convicted offenders, arrestees, and non-citizen detainees to go to the FBI Laboratory Division for processing. That flow never stopped. The processing did not keep up.
The bureau’s own fiscal year 2027 budget request said the CODIS processing backlog reached 1.8 million by the end of fiscal 2024. Sustained volume increases had outpaced DNA program resources.
Patel’s August online statement put the figure even higher at more than 1.81 million samples. He said the pile had been growing by roughly 75,000 samples a month.
The FBI’s Office of Public Affairs said the bureau still receives roughly 50,000 samples a month. Clearing the old stack while new ones keep arriving is the difference between a lab that works and a lab that drowns.
In August, Patel posted a short line that captured the point.
"DNA profiles belong in CODIS helping law enforcement solve crimes, not stalled in a government backlog,"
In September he repeated the zero-backlog claim before the Senate Judiciary Committee during an oversight hearing. He told lawmakers the Lab Division had carried a backlog of more than 1.8 million samples for years before his confirmation and that it now stood at zero.
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, cited FBI data showing criminal arrests up 80 percent and violent crime arrests up 90 percent during Patel’s tenure.
The announcement lands alongside separate FBI figures released in August. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter fell an estimated 18.1 percent in 2025, the largest year-to-year decline in violent crime since the agency began national estimates in 1936.
Those crime numbers are not proof that the DNA cleanup alone drove the drop. They do show a bureau under new management claiming results on both the lab floor and the street at the same time.
CODIS only helps if profiles get entered. A backlog of nearly two million samples meant years of potential matches never reached investigators. Victims of rape, murder, and other violent crimes waited while tubes and files sat in queue.
Patel’s account is straightforward. Prior leadership let the pile grow past statutory requirements. His team added gear, people, better systems, and basic business analytics. The Lab Division finished the job.
Taxpayers fund the FBI to solve crimes, not to warehouse evidence. A zero backlog is the minimum standard the law already required, and the one that finally got met.
