DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud

Ministry of Justice A bombshell was announced on Tuesday 11-pack fraud claim accuses Southern Poverty Law Center Secretly funding leaders and organizers of the white supremacist, racist and other hate groups the civil rights group claims to fight.

“SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) were also actively promoting racist groups while SPLC denounced the same groups on its own website,” reads the indictment returned Tuesday by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Montgomery, Alabama. The claim is included.

SPLC, a nonprofit civil rights group, is charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of money laundering.

Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, some of whom were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America, the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club of the Aryan Nations and the Front of America, Acting U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche said at a news conference.

“SPLC wasn’t breaking up groups,” Blanche said as FBI Director Kash Patel stood next to her. “Instead, by paying resources to fuel racial hatred, he was producing the extremism he claimed to oppose.”

“One disturbing example is SPLC’s payment to a member of the leadership group that planned the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in one death and dozens of injuries,” the acting attorney general said, noting that the indictment alleges the group paid the individual approximately $270,000 over eight years.

The SPLC said earlier Tuesday that it was the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department, and that the focus of the investigation appeared to be on the group’s use of pre-paid, confidential informants “to gather credible intelligence about violent extremist groups.”

In a statement responding to Blanche’s press conference, the group’s interim CEO, Bryan Fair, said: “We are outraged by the false allegations made against the SPLC, an organization that has stood as a beacon of hope for 55 years, fighting against white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive.

“Combating violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous jobs there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do. To be clear, this program has saved lives,” Fair said.

“SPLC will vigorously defend ourselves, our people, and our work; we will continue to fight hate; we will continue to envision and create a safer, more just world,” he said.

FBI Director Patel said in October that the FBI would: Cutting ties with SPLChe calls it a “partisan smear machine.”