SPLC charged with defrauding donors over paid extremism informant program

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday for allegedly using funds to secretly pay leaders of violent extremist groups to act as confidential informants without telling donors, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

The indictment, which was handed up by a federal grand jury in Alabama, charged the civil rights group with nearly a dozen counts including bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The case was announced soon after SPLC interim President and CEO Bryan Fair revealed the organization was under investigation for its now defunct program that used paid confidential informants to penetrate White supremacist and other organizations to “infiltrate” their ranks, learn about their activities and report their insight to law enforcement.

Fair denied any wrongdoing on behalf of the SPLC and said that they will “vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

Founded in 1971, the SPLC is best known for its work investigating and tracking violent extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. In recent years, however, its faced accusations from Republicans and allies of President Donald Trump who say it is unfairly labelling conservative organizations and individuals as extremists.

Those allegations intensified in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination last year, as the SPLC had described Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA in a report as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”

FBI Director Kash Patel quickly broke ties with the SPLC, which had long provided its research on hate crimes and domestic extremism to the bureau, saying that it had become a “partisan smear machine.”

At least $3 million in alleged payments

Prosecutors focused their case on eight informants who received at least $3 million in payments between 2014 and 2023, according to the indictment. Some of those individuals were members of the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi parties in the US, the indictment says, adding that their payments were sent through shell companies to obfuscate who was being paid.

The system went against the SPLC’s promise to fight against violent extremist groups, Blanche said in a news conference Tuesday, adding that the organization was required to be transparent with donors about what their money was going towards.

“As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups, it was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” Blanche said.

The indictment offers little to back up Blanche’s claim that the payments were used to fund crimes by the violent extremist groups, but it describes some of the informants who the SPLC was allegedly paying.

In one instance outlined in court documents, the SPLC paid a member of a neo-Nazi group the National Alliance who had broken into a different extremist group’s headquarters, stole 25 boxes of documents and sent copies to an SPLC employee. Information from those documents was later used in a story posted on the SPLC’s Hatewatch website, prosecutors say.

That informant worked with SPLC for nearly 10 years, according to court documents, and was paid more than $1 million.

A second informant was paid about $6,000 to take the fall for the theft, the indictment says.

Another informant highlighted in the charging documents allegedly helped coordinate transportation to the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was a member of leadership group chats for the event.

The SPLC’s Fair said in a statement following the Justice Department news conference, “We have recently received and are reviewing the charges; however, after today’s Department of Justice press conference we are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC – an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multi-racial democracy where we can all live and thrive. Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do. To be clear, this program saved lives.”

Fair continued: “The actions by the DOJ will not shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the Civil Rights movement becomes a reality for all. SPLC will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff and our work; we will continue to fight hate; and we will continue to envision and create a safer and more just world.”

This story has been updated with details from the indictment.

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