The FBI has reached a turning point with a group that’s supposedly dedicated to battling bigotry — but with a history that includes tarring the conservative group founded by the late Charlie Kirk.
In a statement to Fox News, FBI Director Kash Patel declared the bureau was cutting ties with the Anti-Defamation League, a group founded more than a century ago to combat anti-Semitism and has recently been in headlines for including Kirk’s Turning Point USA in its now-defunct “Glossary of Extremism.”
And Patel cited the FBI’s disgraced former director, James Comey, in his reasoning for the move.
“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. That was not law enforcement, it was activism dressed up as counterterrorism, and it put Americans in danger,” Patel said, according to Fox News Digital.
“That era is finished. This FBI formally rejects Comey’s policies and any partnership with the ADL,” he added.
The ADL took down its “Glossary of Extremism” on Tuesday.
Without mentioning that the database had included Turning Point USA, the group explained that the list had been developed “over many years” and that some entries had become “outdated.”
In a now-deleted background page about Turning Point, the ADL claimed the group had ties to “a range of right-wing extremists and has generated support from anti-Muslim bigots, alt-lite activists and some corners of the white supremacist alt-right.”
On Monday, before the glossary was removed, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, an outspoken conservative, used the social media platform X to include an image of the ADL’s description of Turning Point, now led by Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, and drily noted what she considered the ADL’s standards.
Among accusations of “conspiracy theories” about the origin of COVID-19 and election fraud, the ADL claimed Turning Point “demonized the transgender community.”
“Seems to me like if they don’t agree with you, they will label you a ‘hate group,’” Luna wrote.
The @ADL has some explaining to do. Seems to me like if they don’t agree with you, they will label you a “hate group.” pic.twitter.com/vogIzOiqCQ
— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) September 29, 2025
Even after the glossary was removed, ADL critics weren’t backing away.
“The FBI was taking their ‘hate group’ definitions from ADL, which is why FBI was investigating Charlie Kirk & Turning Point, instead of his murderers …,” mega-billionaire Elon Musk wrote in a post on the social media platform X.
The FBI was taking their “hate group” definitions from ADL, which is why FBI was investigating Charlie Kirk & Turning Point, instead of his murderers … https://t.co/xTAfSY8vqr
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 1, 2025
But as Patel told Fox, those days are over.
Patel’s “love letter” reference about Comey related to a speech Comey gave to the ADL in 2017, in which he described one of his own speeches in 2014 as a “love letter to the ADL.”
“We are not only educating ourselves. We are working with the ADL to build bridges in the communities we serve,” Comey said in the 2017 address.
For its part, the ADL released a statement Wednesday acknowledging Patel’s decision and restating its “deep respect” for the FBI.
— ADL (@ADL) October 1, 2025
It also declared, it remained “more committed than ever to our core purpose to protect the Jewish people.”
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