What Is Happening Between ADL and the FBI?

Mike Howell, an investigative columnist for The Daily Signal, accused the FBI as compromising its integrity and fairness through its partnership with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). 

Most Americans recognize that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a far-left, dark-money behemoth with assets of nearly a quarter-billion dollars. The once-respected FBI is now viewed as being similarly politicized. Overall support for the agency has nose-dived to only 37% among the general public and a meager 17% among Republicans.

Yet few Americans realize how closely the ADL works with the FBI to advance their leadership’s political interests. This is a dangerous collaboration wherein the increasingly radical group provides ideologically driven guidance to people with the guns.

Right now, the FBI is pointing those guns at the political enemies of the far Left.

The ADL’s work covers the usual left-wing causes célèbres: fighting voting integrity measures, pushing for open-border policies and amnesty for illegal aliens, and vigorously defending the Black Lives Matter riots, to name a few.

The group has now politically weaponized its charges of antisemitism, falsely smearing conservatives while excusing blatant antisemitism among its political allies. For example, the organization has groundlessly denounced Elon Musk, a powerful libertarian voice, as an antisemite in a baldfaced effort to drain his social network X, of advertising revenue. Yet, when now-Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) came to the defense of his uncle for antisemitic remarks he made in the ‘90s, the organization refused to condemn him.

According to Howell, “Jonathan Tobin of Jewish News Syndicate traces ADL’s hard-left turn to its change in leadership from longtime leader Abe Foxman to Jonathan Greenblatt, a former staffer in the Clinton and Obama White Houses.” Tobin wrote, “Greenblatt has helped to shift the ADL from its former stance as the non-partisan gold standard for monitoring hate to being just another liberal activist group whose priority is helping the Democrat Party.”

In addition, Howell reported that the Oversight Project at The Heritage Foundation released an investigative report that detailed an “Extremist Sitrep” email from the “ADL Law Enforcement” account to The Washington State Fusion Center, which is a collective of various law enforcement entities ranging from local to the FBI.

The email advises law enforcement officers responsible for investigating domestic terrorists to focus their resources on the likes of Matt Walsh, Chris Fufo an Libs of TikTok…. Much like the FBI’s infamous anti-Catholic targeting memo, the ADL email suggests that law enforcement agencies – people with guns and the power to imprison and financially destroy enemies of the state-should concentrate their efforts on nonviolent citizens whose only ‘crime’ is to have exercised their First Amendment freedoms in support of political viewpoints contrary to the authoritarian Left.

The goal here is clearly to punish the “thought criminals” and force adherence to the dogmas of the state.

The problematic email is surely not the only contact between the ADL and the FBI. Howell reported that former FBI agents stated that “they are conditioned from the very beginning of their careers to be receptive to ADL propaganda.” The same former FBI agents said that “One of the first experiences of a new agent is an ADL-sponsored trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.” He added, “The ostensible purpose of the trip is to impress on new agents that they bear a tremendous responsibility that should never be abused.”

The former FBI agents told Howell that “the trip’s real purpose is to prepare agents to be receptive to the onslaught of propaganda and rewards that the ADL will be sending their way throughout the coming years.” In other words, agents are told at the beginning of their careers that “the ADL is a trusted partner.”

The partnership between the FBI and the ADL grows from that point. In fact, ADL brags on it website, “We educate annually an estimated 15,000 law enforcement personnel from local, state and federal agencies.” The site added, “in 2021 alone, the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) provided law enforcement with critical intelligence about extremism over 1,300 times and tracked over 7,300 incidents of hate on our online, interactive H.E.A.T. map.” Howell added that the ADL has a school to train “executive-level law enforcement officials.”

Howell understands why there is such little public confidence in the FBI. He suggested that one fix for the situation would be “to end the partnership between the ADL and the FBI.” This would “draw a bright line” between the FBI and “dark, far-left operations” and “make sure that line is not crossed.”