I find this news deeply distressing. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been indicted by a grand jury for money laundering, making false statements, and conspiracy:
A Grand Jury in Montgomery, Alabama, today returned an indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division filed two forfeiture actions to recover alleged proceeds of the organization’s fraud scheme. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated this case with assistance from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “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.”
“The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups – even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes. That is illegal – and this is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved.”
This is not a rumor or a partisan talking point; it is a formal indictment returned by a grand jury. That makes it serious. But it is still unproven—and that uncertainty is precisely what makes the situation so troubling. The reason I find it distressing is that no matter how it is interpreted there is very little good news here. As I see it there are three prospective explanations:
1. The SPLC’s side—they were engaging in investigation and paying informants.
Even if this were an informant model, it raises difficult questions about moral hazard and indirect enablement. Money is fungible, and the line between infiltration and subsidization is not as clean as one might wish. Furthermore, citizens in a polity have an obligation to report crimes. That applies to journalists and NGOs as well. If they knew that crimes were to be committed and, worse, paid some of those doing the planning for those crimes, they were accomplices before the fact.
2. The DOJ’s explanation—the SPLC were committing crimes to have more to complain about.
According to the indictment starting 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. Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.
“Donors gave their money believing they were supporting the fight against violent extremism,” said Acting United States Attorney Kevin Davidson. “As alleged, the SPLC instead diverted a portion of those funds to benefit individuals and groups they claimed to oppose. That kind of deception undermines public trust and social cohesion.”
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…
Those groups included the Ku Klux Klan, the American NAZI Party, and Aryan Nation.
Long-lived organizations like the SPLC are subject to a temptation to drift from mission completion to mission maintenance. Has the SPLC fallen to that temptation?
3. The DOJ is engaging in a partisan hit job.
The SPLC, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and many others have made precisely that claim against the DOJ.
Every single one of those explanations would be horrid. Whichever explanation proves correct, something important has already been damaged.
I used to get mailers from SPLC informing me that I was being acknowledged for my service with an award plaque which included an acceptance form with donation commitment. Ever since I thought the organization had become dubious.
The indictment includes mail fraud allegations for false statements to a federally insured bank, which led the bank to mark the accounts as suspicious. They may be dead to rights on this one. This is separate from whether SPLC committed fraud on its donors, which raises questions about whether donors would approve of these activities.
It’s almost impossible to not get an indictment but Trump’s prosecutors have achieved that in a number of high profile cases like the one with the 6 people who spoke out against unlawful orders. So my guess is that there will be a lot of overreach in this case. The part that seems most likely to have some truth is that they paid informants. The FBI and police do that all of the time so it’s legal for them but I dont know the laws on this for private organizations.
PD- I used to get those every week or two it seemed from various medical organizations I never heard of and never bothered to look up and a few that seemed kind of legit. I viewed them as either scams or the equivalent of high pressure, sneaky solicitation for funding. I still ge the ones, even though retired, from the Who’s Who people.
Steve
Is there a likelihood that all 3 are true?
How about another one — that this is more widespread then one organization? How many domestic extremists (on both sides) are being funded in a “false flag” sense.
1 and 3 yes. @ is incredibly unlikely. It’s been claimed as happening nearly every time the right is involved in anything bad or questionable. (That plus they blame Soros for everything.) The left also sometimes accuses the right. I cant think of any occasion in the last 25 years where the claim was true.
Steve
The 3 options you cite are as rational as I’ve seen on the issue in our generally abysmal media world.
I find option three somewhat implausible, just a thinly veiled and wholly political dodge. But the whole case may turn on what the meaning of fraud and wire fraud is.
All the points Dave makes in #1 are correct. The notion that the SPLC was simply funding informants out of the goodness of their heart isn’t really plausible. What next, they have been funding “informant” banker robber accomplices so they could make citizen’s arrests of bank robbers?
# 2 seems most likely (again with the fraud and wire fraud caveats – the legal system, such as it is, will sort it out). A little background might provide color. The SPLC was in some financially lean years, and then this scheme was cooked up. Contributions grew very significantly. Meanwhile, Laureen Jobs, who now owns the always left leaning Atlantic, turned it into a wholesale anti-conservative rag. And who is Ms Jobs favorite charity? SPLC. Hmmm. And what has the Atlantic been doing knowing this issue was in grand jury? Well, they recently ran a well timed hit piece of a drunken Patel. All without a shred of evidence and citing nothing but “anonymous” sources. Anonymous sure does get around. If I was a cynic I’d say it was classic pre-bunking. So spare me notions of Jobs, the Atlantic or the SPLC just doing God’s work protecting us from the KKK or Aryan Nation.
I don’t see how 1 excludes 2.
The Federal Government isn’t alleging having informants is a crime. The indictment is in the act of funding informants, the SPLC committed fraud and money laundering to conceal the scheme.
To an extent, its real life imitation of the movie “The Departed” (both the American and the Hong Kong version).
PS : the Hong Kong version was titled “Infernal affairs”.
The “informants” were often the people in command of these organizations. The SPLC was funding the organizations.
The SPLC people are clearly bad people. But it still doesnt make the narrow legal question clear: is it fraud and wire fraud.