The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted yesterday on federal fraud charges tied to its use of paid informants to surveil extremist groups. The Justice Department alleges the Alabama-based legal advocacy center misled donors by channeling millions of dollars to individuals affiliated with the groups, including the Ku Klux Klan.
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”
“The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups – even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes. That is illegal – and this is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved.”
The SPLC is a non-profit organization headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, whose mission, according to its website during the relevant time period, was to be a “catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.”
According to the indictment starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent and extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction. Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.
The SPLC says the program, which reportedly began in the 1980s, was necessary to monitor threats of violence and kept relatively secret to protect informants. It has previously shared gathered intelligence with local and federal law enforcement. The FBI, however, severed decades-long ties with the center in October, with Director Kash Patel calling it partisan and criticizing the center’s map of anti-government and extremist groups (explore here).
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