A federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama,indictedthe Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The DOJ alleges that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid at least$3 millionto individuals affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Unite the Right, the National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, the National Socialist Party of America, the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, and the American Front.

The payments were made through fictitious entities, including “Fox Photography” and “Rare Books Warehouse,” and the SPLC never disclosed this informant program to donors. One informant received more than $1 million while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance; another was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges alongside FBI Director Kash Patel, who had previously severed the bureau’s relationship with the SPLC, calling it a “partisansmear machine.” The SPLC reported over $800 million in assets as of 2024. Interim CEO Bryan Faircalled the allegationsfalse, saying the SPLC’s sources had “risked their lives” and provided information to the FBI that “saved lives.” The indictment does not allege that funds went directly to the hate groups themselves, only to affiliated individuals.

The indictment is the latest development in a long record of the SPLC using its “hate group” designation against Christian organizations, a pattern that produced real-world violence, a nationwide Catholic surveillance program, and the systematic exclusion of Christian ministries from donor platforms. The irony is that the vast majority of African Americans the SPLC purports to defend are themselves Christians, particularly in the South.

The SPLC designated theFamily Research Council(FRC) as a hate group in 2010. In August 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins II entered FRC’s Washington headquarters armed with a 9mm pistol and multiple magazines. He told the FBI, “Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups. I found them online, did a little research, went to the website, stuff like that.”

Prosecutors said his mission was to kill as many people as possible; a security guard was shot but stopped the attack. Corkinspleaded guiltyto committing an act of terrorism while armed and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2013. FRC President Tony Perkins stated that Corkins “was given a licenseby a group such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, who labeled us a hate group because we defend the family and we stand for traditional, orthodox Christianity.” A decade after the attack, FRC remained on theSPLC hate map.

The SPLC also designated theAlliance Defending Freedomas a hate group, an organization founded in 1994 by Christian leaders, including James Dobson, Bill Bright, and D. James Kennedy, which has since secured 64 victories before the United States Supreme Court. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III wrote in the Wall Street Journal that placing ADF alongside KKK chapters was “not only wrong, it’s malicious.”

In 2015, the SPLC listed Dr. Ben Carson, an African American neurosurgeon,as an extremistfor opposing same-sex marriage, placing him alongside KKK and neo-Nazi groups. The SPLC was forced to apologize and remove him from the list after public backlash.

In January 2023, the FBI’s Richmond Field Office produced aninternal memoidentifying “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potential domestic violent extremists, drawing on SPLC designations as a primary source.

The memo listed specific groups, including Catholic Apologetics International and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It treated adherence to the Latin Mass and opposition to abortion as indicators of potential radicalization.

Source: The Gateway Pundit