FBI Director Kash Patel called the Anti-Defamation League “an extreme group functioning like a terrorist organization,” saying in a Wednesday announcement that the FBI has cut all formal ties with the anti-hate group. 

Patel slammed James Comey, the former FBI director now facing federal charges for allegedly lying to Congress in 2020, for speaking at an ADL conference in 2014 and 2017.

“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 told Fox News. “That was not law enforcement, it was activism dressed up as counterterrorism, and it put Americans in danger.” 

The ADL’s website says the organization “works closely with federal, state and local law enforcement to assist them in protecting communities from extremism and hate.” The Bureau’s Denver field office gave a leadership award to a senior ADL official last year, calling the ADL “invaluable partners for the FBI in Denver.” The press release announcing that award has since been deleted from the FBI’s website. 

“That era is finished,” Patel said Wednesday. “This FBI formally rejects Comey’s policies and any partnership with the ADL.”

In recent days, the ADL came under fire from Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and other far-right activists because of a post on its website that outlined ties between extremists and Turning Point USA, the activist group founded by Charlie Kirk, the conservative influencer who was killed at a speaking engagement in Utah last month. Facing pressure from these leading voices on the right, the ADL this week deleted its online Glossary of Extremism and Hate.

“ADL has deep respect for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement officers at all levels across the country who work tirelessly every single day to protect all Americans regardless of their ancestry, religion, ethnicity, faith, political affiliation or any other point of difference,” the group said in a statement Wednesday.

“In light of an unprecedented surge of antisemitism, we remain more committed than ever to our core purpose to protect the Jewish people.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said on Tuesday that federal investigators were looking into the funding sources for left-wing groups behind organized protest movements that have resulted in rioting on city streets and civil rights violations on college campuses. 

Patel made the comments while appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a marathon oversight hearing, where he faced dozens of questions from Democrats and Republicans about the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk last week. 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) urged Patel to investigate the financing of far-left groups that the Texas senator said may have influenced the suspected shooter and supported protests in recent years that saw instances of rioting or other illegal activity.

“As I’ve always said, Senator, money doesn’t lie. We’ve been following the money, and that’s what we’re doing, issuing a lawful process to organizations involved with criminal activity because the money has got to come from somewhere,” Patel told Cruz. 

Cruz stressed his belief that the bankrolling of these political efforts has led to the riots in major cities and the surge of campus antisemitism in recent years, and the importance of identifying the individuals and organizations responsible.

“I want to encourage you in the course of this investigation, absolutely go after anyone who aided and abetted, but I want to more broadly encourage you: follow the money. The violence we are seeing is not purely organic. There is, I believe, significant money that is spreading dissension, that is spreading violence,” Cruz said. 

“Both the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots of a couple of years ago, and the pro-open borders riots in Los Angeles and other cities of this past year, I believe there was significant money behind those riots. I’m not the only person who noticed at the antisemitic protests and violent protests on college campuses last year, that many of the tents all matched,” he added.

Cruz, who introduced legislation in July to add rioting to the list of predicate offenses under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act — which targets organized crime — added that he believes the money “should be tracked and prosecuted under RICO.”

Following a series of questions about the suspect’s motive in killing Kirk and reports that others had prior knowledge of the suspect’s plans, Cruz urged Patel to probe the funding sources of Antifa specifically in connection with the shooting, and called on the Trump administration to designate the far-left political movement as a terrorist organization. 

“I would encourage the administration to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization and go systematically after Antifa. They’ve committed acts of violence all over the country, and the shell casings [found with the weapon used to kill Kirk] have multiple references to slogans that Antifa has popularized. I believe there is considerable money funding it,” Cruz said. 

The Texas senator noted in the context of some online celebration of Kirk’s killing that while free speech remains protected under the First Amendment, violent activity does not. 

“Nazis and Klansmen can march in the streets and even though their speeches are bigoted and horrible and racist, the First Amendment protects it. Conduct, however, is not protected by the First Amendment, particularly conduct that is violent,” Cruz said. “Violent conduct — that is threatening to others, that is harassing others, that is injuring or in this case murdering others — is most assuredly not protected by the First Amendment, and so I would encourage you and the FBI to focus on conduct. Now, speech can direct, speech can guide you to those who engaged in conduct.”

Earlier in the hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Patel discussed their shared view that social media is “one of the instruments radicalizing America and inciting violence” and their support for repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the legal provision that shields social media platforms from legal liability for the content their users post.

“After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there seems to be one refrain from everybody, and that’s about the effect of social media,” Graham said. “These companies are taking content that makes you sick, that could get you killed, get you poisoned, and there’s nothing we can do about it under our law … because of Section 230. If your child is being sexually groomed online or bullied online, and you go to the social media company and ask them to take it down [and if] they refuse, you have like zero rights.”

“My belief is based on the data, and the data shows that social media is wildly out of control when it comes to radicalizing,” Patel said. 

Graham went on to press Patel about how he would characterize “the state of threats to our homeland by foreign terrorist groups,” which the latter replied to by pointing out that such organizations were working to adapt technologically.

“Foreign terrorist organizations have adapted and started utilizing online platforms and so has the FBI. While they are adapting [and] expanding how they harm our country, we have as well. They have not stopped. There’s been a resurgence [of terrorist threats] in places like West Africa and elsewhere of foreign terrorist organizations and also the newly emboldened drug trafficking organizations in Mexico,” Patel said, adding that addressing this surge was “going to take a whole-of-government approach.”

Patel responded affirmatively when asked if his previous comment could apply to Hezbollah, and concurred with Graham’s assessment that “Hezbollah is involved in not only terrorism but narcoterrorism.”

At another point in the hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked Patel if Jeffrey Epstein was “an intelligence asset for the U.S. government or a foreign government.” Online conspiracy theories have alleged, without evidence, that Epstein worked for the Mossad.

“I can only speak to the FBI, as the director of the FBI, and Mr. Epstein was not a source for the FBI,” Patel replied, later vowing to provide Congress with “all records I am legally permitted to do so under the court orders.”

When Audrey Azoulay was elected director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2017, many U.N. watchers — including some of its staunchest critics — were pleasantly surprised that UNESCO’s members had selected a Jew to lead the organization for the first time since it was founded in 1946.

The timing of Azoulay’s come-from-behind two-vote victory over a Qatari competitor came with a tinge of irony: Just one day earlier, the United States and Israel had each announced their intention to withdraw from the body, citing its persistent anti-Israel slant and “extreme politicization.” 

The organization tasked with preserving cultural heritage sites around the world has for decades faced accusations of political bias. President Ronald Reagan first pulled the U.S. out of the body in 1984 over allegations of anti-Western, pro-Soviet sentiment. 

When UNESCO became the first U.N. body to vote to admit the “State of Palestine” as a full voting member in 2011, the U.S. cut funding to the organization. In 2016, UNESCO passed a controversial resolution about the Temple Mount in Jerusalem that ignored Jewish ties to the holy site. A year later, Israel and the U.S. cut ties entirely.

All of that was before Azoulay took the helm of UNESCO. Now her leadership is in the spotlight, after the Trump administration said last week that it would again depart the body, following President Joe Biden’s decision to reenter UNESCO in 2023. “UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said this month, arguing that the organization perpetuates “a globalist ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”

But Azoulay, a former French culture minister who comes from an illustrious Moroccan Jewish family, said in a statement last week that “the situation has changed profoundly” since the U.S. departed UNESCO in 2018. “These claims also contradict the reality of UNESCO’s efforts, particularly in the field of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism,” she said. UNESCO declined to make Azoulay available for an interview, but a spokesperson noted that “the level of tension” within the body on Middle East issues “has been reduced, which is a unique situation in the U.N. system today.” 

Her lobbying is unlikely to impact the Trump administration. But even without the U.S. as a member, UNESCO remains an important global organization with lofty goals: “to create solutions to some of the greatest challenges of our time, and foster a world of greater equality and peace.” Azoulay has bought into that mission, with the added challenge of trying to make the organization less politically toxic in a polarized world.  

“She really came into office intent on changing UNESCO’s public image and internal work,” Deborah Lipstadt, the former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told Jewish Insider this week. She has worked with Azoulay on antisemitism-related programming since 2018. “I think she recognized the flaws that had been prevalent before, and I think she was really trying to turn things around, and she deserves great credit for that.”

Azoulay grew up in France, but her family hails from Essaouira, a seaside Moroccan city that was once majority Jewish, though she rarely speaks about her family’s story. Her father, André Azoulay, spent the first two decades of his career climbing the ranks at Paribas Bank in Paris, before he returned to Morocco in 1990 to serve as an advisor to King Hassan II. Now, he is a senior advisor to King Mohammed VI, and his influence is rumored to be expansive.

“She is a really remarkable person, to have come from this Moroccan Jewish background, to become so French that she’s a minister in the French government, and then to achieve this position in UNESCO,” said Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation. Whatever people want to say about UNESCO, I think you have to judge her by what she has done.”

“Azoulay is the kingdom’s all-purpose fixer, a man who gets stuff done thanks to an endless list of high-profile contacts who wouldn’t dare to ignore his calls,” Tablet Magazine wrote in a 2018 profile of the elder Azoulay. 

When he inaugurated a structure called Beit Dakira — “House of Memory” — in Essaouira in 2020, to preserve the city’s Jewish heritage, his daughter attended the event on behalf of UNESCO. She has worked in several French government agencies, and before being named culture minister in 2016, Azoulay was an advisor to French President Francois Hollande. 

“She is a really remarkable person, to have come from this Moroccan Jewish background, to become so French that she’s a minister in the French government, and then to achieve this position in UNESCO,” said Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation, who attended the Essaouira event in 2020. He worked with Azoulay on a 2021 World Philosophy Event celebrating Muslim and Jewish poetry. “Whatever people want to say about UNESCO, I think you have to judge her by what she has done,” said Guberman.

UNESCO has worked closely with the World Jewish Congress in recent years, particularly on programming related to Holocaust education. Its president, Ronald Lauder, wrote in a 2018 op-ed that UNESCO’s history of dozens of resolutions condemning Israel “makes a mockery of the U.N.” Azoulay, he wrote, has been able to move the organization forward — to a point.

“She was able to accomplish some things diplomatically with Israel that hadn’t been done before. She got the president to come to Holocaust Remembrance Day, and that was the first time that ever happened,” said David Killion, who served as U.S. ambassador to UNESCO in the Obama administration.

“Audrey Azoulay, the new head of UNESCO, is making great strides correcting this and we applaud her for what she’s doing. But after decades of bad behavior at UNESCO, its reputation cannot be cleansed overnight. Especially when this virus of antisemitism still runs throughout the entire body of the U.N.,” Lauder wrote. 

Azoulay reportedly urged Israel not to exit the organization in 2018, arguing at the time that UNESCO had made progress in fighting bias. Israel still left. But she pulled off a strategic victory in 2022.

“She was able to accomplish some things diplomatically with Israel that hadn’t been done before. She got the president to come to Holocaust Remembrance Day, and that was the first time that ever happened,” said David Killion, who served as U.S. ambassador to UNESCO in the Obama administration. 

In Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s virtual remarks at a UNESCO Holocaust remembrance event in 2022, he directly praised Azoulay. They were unexpected words from a country that had previously offered sharp criticism of the organization. 

“UNESCO has the tools with which to inform the younger generation about what happened and teach them what must never be allowed to happen again,” Herzog said. “I wish to recognize UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay for her strong leadership.”

Azoulay said in a speech soon after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks that UNESCO “was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust and the Second World War,” which is why, she said, fighting Holocaust denial remains a key priority of the organization. 

That work has been done in partnership with the World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and, for a period, the Biden administration. Former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff met with Azoulay at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris last year and pledged that the U.S. would contribute $2.2 million to a UNESCO program to teach about the Holocaust and genocide. 

But the agency’s commitment to fighting antisemitism has been tested since Oct. 7. 

Speaking to a global gathering of antisemitism special envoys two weeks after the attacks, Azoulay said the Hamas terrorists operated “in the same modus operandi as the pogroms.” After the “massacres” that day, Azoulay added, “We have seen a new wave of antisemitism, regrettably with all the hallmarks of our time.”

Since then, though, UNESCO has mostly directed its ire at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Critics have noted, for instance, that UNESCO has warned of damage to cultural heritage sites in Gaza and Lebanon, while not expressing the same degree of concern about sites in Israel. At a recent meeting of UNESCO’s executive board, the agency voted to approve several measures calling out Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

“That kind of stuff remains, and it’s really bigger than her, because I think that’s the point with any U.N. [agency]. The system is so geared against Israel,” said Anne Herzberg, legal advisor at NGO Monitor, a research institute that is critical of the U.N. system. “I do think she’s well-intentioned, and I do think she has made efforts to try to depoliticize the agency. I don’t want to cast aspersions on her at all, but I do think the problem is, you’re operating in a system that’s almost impossible to change.”

Former Obama administration OMB Director Peter Orszag, the CEO of Lazard, sounded an alarm Thursday morning over the leftward direction of the Democratic Party, especially when it comes to its handling of antisemitism.  

He spoke out on CNBC after far-left state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor. 

“I’m saddened to say the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly antisemitic and anti-capitalism… Turning away from your principles and towards antisemitism never works,” Orszag said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” this afternoon.

He went on: “The Democratic candidate for mayor has embraced the global intifada idea. The DCCC has distributed fundraising emails from a senior Democratic operative [James Carville] saying Jewish donors [are] only interested in tax cuts. The senior leadership in the party seems to have cognitive dissonance on Israel. It’s problematic.”

Orszag has been a major figure in the Democratic Party for years, most prominently serving in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget. 

As antisemitism increases, he said that he had expressed these concerns to Democratic leadership, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has faced his own challenges navigating the ideologically divisive New York City mayoral race.

“I think the New York mayoral race is only part of the broader question. I think the Democratic Party needs to decide what it stands for,” Orszag said. “It needs to decide what its moral principles are and that includes [regarding] antisemitism.”

When asked about how Lazard would respond to a Mamdani mayorship, he said the bar for the company leaving was “very high” and would depend on what policies are implemented.