The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has condemned a past social media post by the Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson that disputed the innocence of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman whom most historians agree was wrongfully convicted of killing a 13-year-old factory worker and lynched in 1915 during a wave of antisemitism in the US.
“Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime,” Wilson wrote on X in response to an August 2024 tweet by the ADL marking the 109th anniversary of Frank’s lynching. “The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you.”
The original tweet by the ADL said: “Tomorrow marks 109 years since Leo Frank was lynched by a hate-filled mob in Georgia after being falsely accused & unjustly convicted of murder in a trial marred by antisemitism. ADL fought to clear Frank’s name & he was finally pardoned in 1986. May his memory be a blessing.”
Wilson’s post, which was sent from her personal account @KingsleyCortes on 16 August and had not been deleted at the time of publication, was recently surfaced on Bluesky by Tristan Lee, a data scientist at the investigative journalism collective Bellingcat. She made the same claim in 2023 tweet memorializing the date Frank was posthumously pardoned. In that post she called the ADL “despicable”.
