Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch announced Tuesday that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on fraud charges for its use of paid informants to monitor and track racist organizations.
The indictment was handed down by a federal grand jury in Alabama, where the organization is based. SPLC faces 11 cases including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.
Blanch, speaking alongside FBI Director Kash Patel at a news conference, said the organization paid at least eight people between 2014 and 2023, including people associated with violent extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi organizations, at least $3 million.
“The SPLC was not eliminating groups,” said Blanch. “Instead it was creating the very extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to promote racial hatred.”
Patel said that the SPLC “used the money raised from its donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups.”
“This is a serious and flagrant violation by a group that was intended to dismantle violent extremist groups but in reality has only promoted hatred,” Patel said.
Earlier on Tuesday, SPLC interim CEO Brian Fair revealed that the group was under criminal investigation, though he said at the time that details of the investigation were unknown. The SPLC, he said, “is the latest organization targeted by this administration” and accused the administration of “weaponizing” its power.
Fair said the investigation could include possible charges against the SPLC or some employees. Only the organization was charged in the indictment, although officials said the investigation was ongoing and individuals could face charges.
Fair accused the administration of “weaponizing” its power.
“Today, the federal government has been weaponized to eliminate the rights of our country’s most vulnerable people and any organization like ours,” Fair said.
The SPLC, founded in 1971 to fight white supremacist groups, has a broader mandate beyond its hate group tracking, including filing lawsuits over voting rights and prisoner rights.
The organization has previously criticized the Trump administration and argued that cabinet members He has used his power to “roll back civil rights, deepen racial injustice, and rig the system against us.”
during a December congressional hearingHouse Republicans accused the group of being “partisan and for-profit.” In October, Patel severed the FBI’s ties with the nonprofit, charging that it had “abandoned civil rights work long ago and turned into a partisan smear machine.”
The SPLC says it has used informants to track and expose hate groups, including white supremacists. Fair said Tuesday that the organization “often” shares insights from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI, but the nonprofit no longer works with paid informants.
“These individuals risked their lives to infiltrate and provide information about the activities of our country’s most radical and violent extremist groups,” Fair said. “When we began working with whistleblowers, we were living in the shadow of the height of the civil rights movement, which had seen the bombings of churches, state-sponsored violence against protesters, and murders of activists that went unpunished by the justice system.”
Fair vowed that the SPLC would “vigorously defend itself, its staff, and its work.”
