DOJ Indicts Southern Poverty Law Center on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges
The Department of Justice on Tuesday announced an 11-count indictment accusing the Southern Poverty Law Center of secretly funding extremist groups it claimed to be combating.
“The SPLC was not dismantling the groups,” Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
Blanche said a grand jury in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Alabama returned the indictment Tuesday. The SPLC, a nonprofit civil rights group, is charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of money laundering.
The SPLC said earlier Tuesday it is the subject of a DOJ criminal probe. “Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement reported by The Associated Press.
