FBI drops ADL partnership, in split from Comey’s playbook

FBI director Kash Patel announced this week that the bureau is severing ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), rejecting the collaboration initiated under former director James Comey. The move follows a wave of conservative backlash over an ADL resource that listed Turning Point USA and other organizations as extremist groups and was removed this week. 

Patel told Fox News that Comey “disgraced the FBI by writing ‘love letters’ to the ADL and embedding agents with an extreme group functioning like a terrorist organization and the disgraceful operation they ran spying on Americans. That was not law enforcement, it was activism dressed up as counterterrorism, and it put Americans in danger.”

He added, “That era is finished. This FBI formally rejects Comey’s policies and any partnership with the ADL.” 

The ADL ditched its “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” after criticism from high-profile conservatives and tech figures, which the group said contained more than 1,000 entries and included outdated or misused material.

“With over 1,000 entries written over many years, the ADL Glossary of Extremism has served as a source of high-level information on a wide range of topics for years. At the same time, an increasing number of entries in the Glossary were outdated,” the ADL wrote on X. “We also saw a number of entries intentionally misrepresented and misused.” The group said the retirement will let it develop new ways to present research. 

The controversy grew after critics pointed to an ADL entry on Turning Point USA, and came amid national outrage following the assassination of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk at an on-campus event three weeks earlier — an event that has sharpened partisan scrutiny of how organizations and law enforcement label political groups. 

Patel’s decision signals a clear break from past FBI outreach with civil-society groups and puts the bureau squarely in the middle of a polarized fight over definitions of extremism, free speech and which outside organizations the FBI should consult.