The top law enforcement agency in the United States has cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), accusing the Jewish advocacy organisation and anti-Semitism watchdog of spying on conservatives.
FBI Director Kash Patel made the announcement on Wednesday after prominent conservative influencers, including Elon Musk, pounced on the ADL’s inclusion of the murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in its “Glossary of Extremism and Hate”.
In a brief statement, Patel singled out the ADL’s associations with former FBI Director James Comey, a strident critic of President Donald Trump who was indicted last week on charges of obstruction and lying to the US Congress.
Patel said Comey had written “love letters” to the ADL and embedded agents within the group, which he accused of running “disgraceful ops spying on Americans”.
“This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs,” Patel said in a social media post.
Patel did not elaborate on, or provide evidence for, his claims.
In a 2014 speech to the ADL’s National Leadership Summit, Comey said the FBI had made the advocacy group’s Law Enforcement and Society training mandatory for personnel and partnered with it to draft a “Hate Crimes Training Manual”.
Comey called the ADL’s experience in investigating hate crimes “essential” and its training “eye-opening and insightful”.
“If this sounds a bit like a love letter to the ADL, it is, and rightly so,” he said.
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