FBI Director Kash Patel announced this week that the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency would no longer work with the Anti-Defamation League. This is a welcome step toward ending the abuse of governmental power by left-wing activists to suppress conservative speech.
“James 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,” Patel said, explaining his decision. “That was not law enforcement, it was activism dressed up as counterterrorism, and it put Americans in danger.”
Patel was referring to a 2014 Comey speech praising the ADL’s work on “anti-Semitism to voting rights and immigration issues … from gender and LGBT equality to anti-Muslim prejudice.
“If this sounds a bit like a love letter to the ADL, it is,” Comey said.
Until this week, the FBI worked extensively with the ADL, including with mandatory training courses for agents and on a hate crimes manual to guide them. The ADL maintained a “Glossary of Extremism,” which it used to attack conservatives.
Most recently, the ADL listed Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization as an extremist group because Kirk believed sex is binary, which is, of course, what genetic science makes plain. In the past, the Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, and the X account Libs of TikTok have been targeted by the ADL for similar prejudiced ideological reasons.
In response to Patel, the ADL removed the “Glossary of Extremism” from the internet this week, explaining that “an increasing number of entries… were outdated,” and it “also saw a number of entries intentionally misrepresented and misused.”
ADL’s admission that its “Glossary of Extremism” had become a hindrance to law enforcement was too late and doubtless insincere. For decades, the organization has abused its brand to defame peaceful conservative people and groups, so law enforcement would harass them.
Patel is right to take the action he has, but his work isn’t done.
In 2014, after a man shot a security guard protecting the Family Research Council, the FBI removed the Southern Poverty Law Center from its “Hate Crime” web page. The shooter, who pleaded guilty to terrorism, confessed that he targeted the FRC after finding it on the SPLC’s “hate map.” He wanted to kill as many conservatives as he could after a Chick-fil-A executive announced his support for traditional marriage.
Even after irrefutable evidence has repeatedly shown that the SPLC is itself a leftist hate group that inspires violence, some in the FBI kept using its resources. In 2023, a leaked document from the Richmond FBI field office revealed that agents were targeting “Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology” based on supposed “data” from the SPLC. Apparently, the agency still allows agents to use SPLC hate products to justify investigations of peaceful Americans guilty of nothing more than practicing their religion.
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Patel should stop agents from using any ADL or SPLC “research” product.
The FBI’s decision to sever ties with the ADL is an overdue victory for accountability and the rule of law. But as long as SPLC and ADL materials are treated as legitimate intelligence, the risk of politicized investigations remains. Patel’s reforms cannot stop halfway. You don’t put out half a fire; you extinguish the whole thing. To restore public trust, he must ensure that law enforcement decisions are driven by facts and evidence, not by the ideological agendas of extreme activist groups. Only then can the FBI return to its proper role: protecting all Americans equally, rather than targeting them for their political or religious beliefs.
, 2025-10-05 09:00:00, 
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