FBI Director Kash Patel has ended a training and intelligence-sharing partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, accusing the organization of spying on conservative groups.
Patel announced the decision in a social media post Wednesday, criticizing a partnership celebrated under former FBI Director James Comey — a political adversary of President Donald Trump who was charged last week in an indictment sought by the Justice Department.
He singled out past speeches by Comey that the former director said amounted to “love letters” to the ADL, which has provided hundreds of tips about extremist activity per year to law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
“James Comey wrote ‘love letters’ to the ADL and embedded FBI agents with them – a group that ran disgraceful ops spying on Americans,” Patel wrote on X. “That era is OVER. This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.”
The ADL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The organization conducts workshops for law enforcement agencies on hate crimes, violent extremism and antisemitism, including a workshop titled “Law Enforcement and Society” that aims to educate officials on the history of the Holocaust and lessons from that period that may be relevant to modern law enforcement agencies.
The Law Enforcement and Society workshop is mandatory for new agents and trainees at the agency’s Quantico base, Comey said in a 2014 speech.
“If this sounds a bit like a love letter to the ADL, it is, and rightly so,” he said in the speech.
Trump allies have increased their attacks on the ADL in recent weeks following the killing of Charlie Kirk. A summary of Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA on the group’s website earlier this year accused Kirk of promoting “Christian nationalism” and detailed the group’s ties to the far-right.
The page has since been removed from the ADL’s website.
Elon Musk, the far-right billionaire with ties to President Donald Trump, suggested the partnership between the FBI and the ADL contributed to the FBI investigating Kirk and other conservatives during its probe of Trump and his allies for their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“The FBI was taking their “hate group” definitions from ADL, which is why FBI was investigating Charlie Kirk & Turning Point, instead of his murderers,” Musk wrote on X.
