WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Tuesday that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on federal fraud charges, alleging the civil rights organization secretly used donor funds to pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups as informants.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said prosecutors contend the SPLC “defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting,” accusing the group of distributing more than $3 million through a now-defunct program to infiltrate white supremacist and other extremist organizations. Court filings say some of those payments were later used by extremists to commit other crimes, though the indictment does not offer specific examples.
“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 in announcing the charges.
The indictment, filed in federal court in Alabama where the SPLC is headquartered, charges the organization with wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The filing follows the SPLC’s recent disclosure that it had been the subject of a criminal probe into its now-disbanded informant program. The center has said the program was used to monitor threats and that information gathered was often shared with local and federal law enforcement. The SPLC also said it will defend its staff and work vigorously and maintained the program helped save lives.
“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,” interim CEO and president Bryan Fair said, asserting the DOJ action will not deter the organization’s civil rights mission.
According to the indictment, the SPLC created bank accounts under fictitious business names such as “Fox Photography” and “Rare Books Warehouse” and made false statements to banks to disguise funds intended for informants. Prosecutors say donors were not informed about the program’s operations or payments.
The government describes at least nine unnamed informants — referred to internally as field sources or “the Fs” — paid through a covert program it says dates back to the 1980s. The filing alleges one informant, affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, received more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023. Another is alleged to have been part of an online leadership chat that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; prosecutors say that person attended the rally at the SPLC’s direction, helped coordinate transportation for others and was paid more than $270,000.
The SPLC has argued secrecy around the program was intended to protect sources, citing historical violence against civil rights activists and saying intelligence from informants helped prevent harm.
Founded in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1971, the SPLC has long used litigation and public reporting to challenge white supremacist groups but has also faced criticism from conservatives, who accuse it of partisan bias. The indictment arrives amid heightened Republican scrutiny of the organization, and some observers warn it could be portrayed as part of a broader political targeting of opponents.
In recent years the center’s reports and its “hate map” listing alleged hate and anti-government groups drew rebukes from some officials. FBI Director Kash Patel announced the agency was cutting ties with the SPLC last year, calling it a “partisan smear machine,” and House Republicans held hearings alleging the group collaborated with the Biden administration to target conservative and religious organizations. The SPLC’s inclusion of Turning Point USA in a section of its “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” report — a passage that attracted attention after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year — intensified criticism from the right and helped fuel the political attacks that preceded the current criminal case.