The Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday was indicted by a grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering over the left-wing group’s alleged informant practices.
The indictment alleges that the SPLC “secretly funneled more than $3 million in funds to white supremacist & extremist groups,” according to the Department of Justice. It said that $1 million went to an affiliate of the National Alliance, hundreds of thousands went to Aryan Nations, a Unite the Right “member,” as well as thousands to former members of the Ku Klux Klan, along with other leaders of extremist groups.
“According to the charges in the indictment, the SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
“It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” he added.
Prosecutors charged the SPLC with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to conceal money laundering.
“They use their donor network to raise money to purportedly dismantle violent extremist groups,” FBI Director Kash Patel said. “However, the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, used the money they raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups. I just want to say that again.”
Blanche said that the wire and bank fraud charges stem from allegations that the SPLC did not properly disclose how donor funds were being used, including payments to controversial figures, whether or not they were acting as informants.
The SPLC is a non-profit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, that describes itself as 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.”
Conservatives have described the SPLC as a partisan organization that unfairly labels political opponents as racists and/or extremists, and have also scrutinized the group’s large endowment and financial practices.
