The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted on federal fraud charges that accused it ofillegally raising millions of dollars to pay informants in white supremacist and other extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

An Alabama grand jury returned an indictment on April 21 with 11 counts of wire fraud, making false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to the Justice Department (DOJ).

Acting Attorney General Todd BlanchesaidSPLCused paid operatives within extremist circles to incite and intensify racial tensions, arguingthe group fostered the very threats it claimed to fight.

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,”Blanche said in a statement.

“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.”

A federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama brought 11 charges against the nonprofit, including six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of money laundering.

The indictment covered the years from 2014 through 2023 and alleged that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) paidat least $3 million to at least eight informants affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, the National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the National Socialist Party of America, and the American Front.

In a twist that no one saw coming,one of the SPLC’s paid informants was a member of the leadership group that planned the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017that resulted in one death, according to the DOJ.

“As the indictment lays out, after SPLC paid members of these extremist groups, it created work product that reported on these activities that the members participated in or contributed to,” Blanche explained.

“And to that end,it was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing.”

Source: ZeroHedge News