Katie Couric, a veteran journalist with a long career spanning CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC, is under scrutiny for promoting a study widely criticized for its methodology and conclusions. On Thursday, Couric posted on the social media platform X, questioning the Department of Justice’s decision to remove the study from its website.

“Why would the US Justice Department remove a study from its website last week that concluded that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terror group?” she wrote.

The post included a graph from the Cato Institute report indicating that, since 1975, right-wing politically motivated killings outnumber those carried out by left-wing extremists. Couric’s comments have sparked debate over both the study’s reliability and the broader discourse on domestic terrorism in the United States.

In her post, Couric defended the study, writing, “This study, based on research spanning three decades, represented one of the most comprehensive government assessments ever of domestic terrorism patterns. It found that ‘militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States’ and that ‘the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.’”

Critics, however, have highlighted significant flaws in the Cato Institute study. It reportedly omits numerous incidents of violence from the 2020 Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests and even excludes the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Additionally, some analysts argue that the study misclassifies certain attacks as right-wing, despite evidence suggesting they were not politically motivated, according to PJ Media columnist Matt Margolis.

Consider, for example, the Oklahoma City bombing. PJ Media columnist Matt Margolis noted that the study classified Timothy McVeigh’s ideology as “right-wing,” a characterization he called debatable. “McVeigh was an anti-government extremist whose rage stemmed from anger over the 1993 Waco siege and the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, not from conservative ideology,” Margolis wrote. He added that McVeigh was reportedly a pro-abortion agnostic.

Amber Duke of the Daily Caller also highlighted omissions in the study, pointing out that it only “counts killings, so we miss highly notable political violence like the two assassination attempts on Trump, the 2017 Republican baseball shooting, the attempted stabbing of Lee Zeldin, a neighbor attacking Sen. Rand Paul, the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a bomb planted under a Fox News van that failed to detonate, and others.”

Couric’s post drew sharp criticism from detractors, who accused her of promoting what they described as a misleading narrative.

Critics have also questioned the credibility of the Cato Institute study’s author, Alex Nowrasteh, with some suggesting he may be biased or ideologically driven. In a post on X published Friday, Nowrasteh addressed the debate, claiming that right-wing supporters often deny “that their terrorists even exist while left-wingers are kind of embarrassed, admit it, and move on.”