The Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal group that exists to oppose hate groups, was secretly giving millions of dollars to white supremacist groups, according to a bombshell indictment from the Department of Justice on Tuesday.
The SPLC was indicted by a grand jury on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering over its informant practices, officials announced late Tuesday.
The indictment says the SPLC “secretly funneled more than $3 million in funds to white supremacist & extremist groups.” It said that money went to groups including Aryan Nations, members of the Ku Klux Klan, and a member of Unite the Right, the group that infamously staged the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said the indictment shows that while the SPLC claimed to be working towards “dismantling these groups,” in reality it was doing the opposite.
“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.
FBI Director Kash Patel echoed Blanche, and said the SPLC was using donor funds to fund the very groups it was raising money to combat.
“They use their donor network to raise money to purportedly dismantle violent extremist groups,” 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.”
Blanche said that the wire and bank fraud charges stem from findings that the SPLC failed to disclose how donor funds were being used, including payments to extremist 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.”
The SPLC is a partisan organization that unfairly labels political opponents as racists. The group’s “hate map” notoriously put conservative parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty alongside the Ku Klux Klan.
Patel’s FBI cut ties completely with the SPLC late last year, and disclosed during Tuesday’s press conference that the investigation into the group was ongoing at the time.
“The FBI will never rely on politicized or agenda-driven intelligence from outside groups — and certainly not from the SPLC,” Patel said. “Under this FBI, all ties with the SPLC have officially been terminated.”