Southern Poverty Law Center indicted for fraud, money laundering
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on fraud charges for its use of paid informants to monitor and track racist organizations, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Tuesday.
The indictment was handed down by a federal grand jury in Alabama, where the organization is based. The SPLC faces 11 counts including wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Blanche, speaking alongside FBI Director Kash Patel at a news conference, said the organization paid at least eight people, including those affiliated with violent extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi organizations, at least $3 million between 2014 and 2023.
“The SPLC was not dismantling the groups,” Blanche said. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
Patel said that the SPLC “used the money they raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups.”
“This is a serious and egregious violation of a group that purported to dismantle violent extremist groups, but in turn, actually only fueled the hatred,” Patel said.
Earlier on Tuesday, SPLC’s interim CEO Bryan Fair revealed the group was under criminal investigation, though at the time he said the details of the investigation were unknown.
Only the organization itself was charged in the indictment, although officials said the investigation is ongoing and individuals could face charges.
Fair accused the administration of “weaponizing” the legal system.
“Today, the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation’s most vulnerable people, and any organization like ours that stands in the breach,” Fair said.
The SPLC, founded in 1971 to fight white supremacist groups, has a wider mandate beyond its hate group tracking, including filing litigation on voting rights and prisoner rights.
The organization has previously criticized the Trump administration and has argued that Cabinet members have used their power to “roll back civil rights, deepen racial injustice, and rig the system against us.”
During a December congressional hearing, House Republicans accused the group of “being partisan and profitable.” In October, Patel severed FBI ties with the nonprofit, alleging that it “long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.”
The SPLC says it has used informants when tracking and exposing hate groups, including white supremacists. Fair on Tuesday said that the organization “frequently” shared insight from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI, but that the nonprofit no longer works with paid informants.