DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud

The Department of Justice on Tuesday announced a bombshell 11-count fraud indictment accusing the Southern Poverty Law Center of secretly funding white supremacist and other hate groups that the civil rights group claimed to be battling.

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

“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.”

“One troubling example, is the SPLC was paying a member of the leadership group that planned the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of one person, and injured dozens more,” the acting attorney general said, noting that the indictment alleged that the group paid the person about $270,000 over the course of eight years.

The indictment was returned Tuesday by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Alabama, Blanche said.

The SPLC, which is a non-profit civil rights group, is charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of money laundering, he said.

“The indictment alleges a very long period of time, up to 2023,” Blanche said.

The SPLC earlier Tuesday said it was the subject of a criminal probe by the DOJ, and that the focus of the probe appeared to be on the group’s prior use of paid, confidential informants “to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”

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

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

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