FBI Director Confirms Biden Administration Spied on Lawful Gun Owners

FBI Director Kash Patel acknowledged that the FBI participated in a program with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to spy on lawful gun purchasers under the Biden administration.

Sen. Ted Cruz brought the issue up during a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. 

“In 2021, the Gun Owners of America discovered a secret FBI program called NICS monitoring, used to track firearms purchases of Americans who are legally eligible to buy a gun but merely suspected of a crime. Is that right?” Cruz asked Patel.

“Yes,” Patel answered.

“So, while DOJ and FBI is focused on their political enemies, they were ignoring violent crime. And that violent crime tragically had a human cost,” the senator continued.

“Yep,” Patel replied. “Real Americans.”

🚨BREAKING🚨@Kash_Patel confirms FBI spies on lawful gun sales:

Cruz: “GOA discovered a secret FBI program called NICS Monitoring, used to track firearm purchases of Americans who were legally eligible to buy a gun but were suspected of a crime. Is that right?”

Patel: “Yes.” https://t.co/driyPHIK5G pic.twitter.com/85OVORHkDL

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) September 15, 2026

Gun Owners of America first discovered the FBI’s NICS Monitoring program through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2021. The documents showed that ATF agents were requesting that the FBI conduct daily manual checks of the system to track lawful gun purchases by individuals who weren’t prohibited buyers.

These checks would occur for periods of 30 to 180 days and could be renewed indefinitely. “They are basically tracking—without a warrant—every gun purchase by these people,” GOA attorney Rob Olson told The Epoch Times. “There’s no legal process here. At best, this is highly questionable, if not outright unlawful.” 

The same records included an FBI email saying an agent would “monitor your suspect for 180 days, at the end of 180 days I will contact you and ask if you would like to continue for another hundred days and keep repeating this process until such time as you wish the investigation to stop.”

GOA filed subsequent FOIA requests which revealed that the ATF and FBI used the program to enforce state-level restrictions, such as California’s assault-weapons ban. Indeed, this is why Brooklyn native Dexter Taylor is serving a 10-year sentence just for building his own firearms using materials he legally purchased online. When he wound up on the ATF’s radar, the agency worked with the NYPD to arrest and prosecute him.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) initiated a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee inquiry after the ATF, under former President Joe Biden, accidentally released unredacted records to GOA and then sought to impose a gag order against the organization.

“This kind of backdoor surveillance of American citizens—without due process or public disclosure—should alarm every single person who values the Bill of Rights,” Paul said. “The ATF and FBI have no business creating secret watchlists for law-abiding Americans seeking to purchase firearms.”

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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