U.S. DOJ Indicts Southern Poverty Law Center for Fraud and Corruption

I was surprised to learn of the indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).  SPLC self describes as one of the most prominent civil rights organizations in the country.

The DOJ announced an 11-count indictment against SPLC for secretly funneling millions of dollars in donations to several of the very same extremist hate groups against which SPLC vehemently rails every day.

The charges include bank and wire fraud and charging the group in connection with a program that used “paid informants” to monitor extremist groups.  There is also one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering alleging SPLC was actually funding these groups.  In pertinent part, the indictment against the SPLC alleges that the “civil rights organization that made its name fighting the Ku Klux Klan defrauded donors by secretly funneling money to extremist groups.” (Wall Street Journal).

Let me offer some context. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is one of the most vicious and vitriolic of all the so-called civil rights organizations and was apparently paying racist entities to engage in the very racism it would then heatedly denounce. 

Wow. Talk about dishonesty and deception. 

Based upon numerous reports, SPLC gave at least $3 million dollars to the racist groups they claim to fight.  It appears that as many as eight (8) hate group leaders, including the KKK Imperial Wizard, the Aryan Nation, and a Neo Nazi, received millions of dollars between 2014 and 2023.  (WSJ, April 21, 2026).  

 Unbelievable. 

The racism and bigotry you claim to fight apparently cannot be easily located so you mislead your donors and pay those very same organizations to “do racist things.”  

One of the most prominent examples of this dishonesty was the Unite The Right rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one person was tragically killed.  Please recall that it was this rally that not only gave rise to the completely false smear of President Trump who was accused of saying there were “fine people on both sides” of the rally but was also, supposedly, the catalyst that persuaded Joe Biden to run for president. 

Biden lied when he accused Trump of equating Nazis with peaceful protesters at Charlottesville.  Anyone who watched the video knows that what Trump actually said was that there were ‘fine people on both sides’ of the debate over whether the truth of American history should be covered up by destroying statutes of civil war generals and politicians, including Presidents Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

The indictment also states that the field operative at the Charlottesville rally made racist postings “under the supervision of the SPLC” for the event.  To hide all of this, SPLC “opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities.”

But again, it was SPLC that was funding the Unite The Right rally!  The protest was apparently great for fundraising and was parlayed into sizable donations from individuals such as George Clooney and companies like Apple Inc, and others. 

The indictment further specifies that “the nonprofit committed financial crimes by telling donors their money was being put toward dismantling hate groups when instead it sometimes furthered their interests.”  

Wouldn’t you imagine that SPLC donors, who presumably contributed their money to the organization because they wanted to fight racism, would be infuriated to learn that their donations were actually being used to promote it?

Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, summarized this fraud succinctly:

The SPLC was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”  FBI Director, Kash Patel, added that “the Southern Poverty Law Center themselves advertise to raise money to dismantle violent extremist groups … however, the SPLC used the money they raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups.”

As the Wall Street Journal also observes, “the donations to hate groups are all the more suspect because in recent years the SPLC has, itself, spread hate. The outfit has diversified its definition of ‘extremist’ groups to include mainstream and nonthreatening conservative groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council and Do No Harm, which works against race preferences in medicine.” (WSJ).

In time we will know if this was illegal, but the corrupt plot has been exposed for all to see and for history to record.