“If these allegations are true, there will be consequences,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier promised Monday, announcing he has launched a probe into the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) “alleged deceptive and unfair practices related to charitable solicitations and fundraising.”
“The SPLC raises millions in charitable donations every year, while allegedly paying members and leaders within the very groups it purports to fight,” Uthmeier wrote on X.com, linking to a press release. “SPLC appears to be running a deceptive organization that pays informants to manufacture racism on its behalf.”
As part of its civil investigation, the Florida attorney general’s office has issued a subpoena commanding SPLC to produce documents and evidence relating to representations made to donors and prospective donors, as well as the use of donations received, by May 25, 2026.
The Florida investigation comes as SPLC is facing an 11-count federal indictment for wire fraud, making false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
“The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public," FBI Director Kash Patel said when the indictment was returned last month. “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
Issued “pursuant to the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act,” Florida’s subpoena requires SPLC to produce communications going back to January 1, 2014.
In particular, the investigation seeks to discover what, if anything, SPLC told donors and prospects about how it provided more than $3 million to the very groups - such as the Ku Klux Klan - that it lists as “hate” and “extremist” groups it purports to fight.
Since the SPLC claims that the money was paid to “informants,” the subpoena calls for any and all information regarding such payments and the uses they funded.
The subpoena also appears to be an effort to discover any covert locations SPLC may be using to secretly send and receive communications, by requiring SPLC to produce:
“Documents sufficient to identify all Florida addresses used by the Company, including, but not limited to, addresses where the Company actually operated and addresses where the Company received correspondence.”
“The DoJ and Uthmeier seem to be taking the Al Capone approach to gangsterism rather than a frontal attack on its financial model,” Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey writes:
“They're going after the money and the way the SPLC moved it to prevent its funding of hate-group leaders and events from coming to the surface. Prosecutors can leave the moral case to the public sphere and focus on taxes and money laundering, which are much easier to document and prove.”
Florida’s investigation “creates a parallel set of consequences that will amplify those from the federal case. The effect will become cumulative,” Ed Morrissey notes:
“Now imagine if ten state Attorneys General opened up civil and/or criminal fraud probes. The effect will be geometric if not exponential, not to mention how it will sap whatever resources the SPLC has in defending itself in these investigations and subsequent indictments and judgments.”
