“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 Tuesday, announcing that a grand jury had returned an 11-count indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche explained in a press release:
“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. No entity is above the law.”
Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and National Socialist Party of America, Patel and Blanche alleged at a press conference Tuesday.
Charges in the 11-count grand jury indictment include:
- Wire fraud,
- False statements to a federally insured bank, and
- Conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
According to the indictment, in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent and extremist groups - such as the Ku Klux Klan - or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction.
Donors were duped into believing they were supporting the fight against violent extremism – but, the SPLC actually used a portion of those funds to benefits groups and individuals they claimed to oppose, according to Acting United States Attorney Kevin Davidson.
Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC allegedly secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups including:
- Ku Klux Klan
- United Klans of America
- Unite the Right
- National Alliance
- National Socialist Movement
- Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club
- National Socialist Party of America (American Nazi Party)
- American Front
According to the indictment, the objective of the scheme and artifice was to obtain money via donations through materially false representations and omissions about what the donated funds would be used for.
In order to covertly pay the individuals, the SPLC allegedly opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities. The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the individuals. In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts, the indictment charges.
“There is a whole body of evidence” of what the SPLC has claimed over the years, Blanche told reporters at the press conference.
Indeed, the NewsBusters division of the Media Research Center (MRC) has extensively documented the SPLC’s decades of false claims and accusations. Rather than call out actual threats, the SPLC has routinely demonized and branded any who oppose its radical leftist ideology as “hate groups” and “extremists.”
In 2010, for example, the SPLC announced that it would designate 13 pro-family organizations as “hate groups,” placing them alongside groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo-Nazi movement and the New Black Panther Party – simply for promoting traditional ideas about marriage, family and sexuality
As NewsBusters reported at the time, the list of pro-family organizations included several prominent conservative groups, including the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America and the National Organization for Marriage.
In 2013, a man who shot and critically injured a Family Research Center (FRC) security staffer pleaded guilty to, among other charges, "committing an act of terrorism with the intent to kill" – saying he was inspired to target FRC because it was on SPLC’s “hate group” list.
In 2018, SPLC lost a defamation lawsuit and had to pay $3.375 million and issue a public apology to Quilliam – a moderate Muslim group – for listing the organization in a “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”
In 2020, Republicans on the House Committee on the Judiciary sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to “request a briefing on how [charity program] AmazonSmile makes its eligibility determinations based on information from the SPLC.” As a result of its reliance on SPLC, AmazonSmile users could donate to Planned Parenthood or the Satanic Temple, but not to pro-traditional family, Christian conservative organizations.
In 2023, an SPLC report was used as a source in the creation of an FBI memo declaring Catholics who favor the traditional Latin mass to be extremists posing a terror threat. When the memo was leaked, public outrage prompted the Biden Administration’s FBI to retract it.
And, just last year, NewsBusters exposed how Google was using the SPLC to elevate political attacks on President Donald Trump:
“If you performed a simple Google search for the names of mainstream journalists and thought leaders, you would expect to get a link to their profile or a link to their website or news outlet. But Google has served up something far more sinister.
“The search giant fed its users dossiers from the disgraced left-wing activist group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which is attempting to brand supporters of President Donald Trump as ‘extremists,’ ‘white supremacists’ and ‘bigots.’”
“Google hates conservatives, so it is pushing SPLC filth while it pretends to be an innocent bystander,” MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider explained:
“This is a group that lumps together neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups with freedom-loving Americans, concerned parents, practicing Christians and observant Jews.”
