Was The Atlantic's Kash Patel Smear A Setup To Discredit The SPLC Indictment?

On April 17,The Atlanticpublished an anonymously sourced hit piece against FBI Director Kash Patel- painting him as a blackout-drunk, paranoid, and erratic executive barely capable of running the nation's premier law enforcement agency.Three days later, a federal grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center for wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The question conservative circles are now asking iswhether the hit piece was deliberately conceived and timed to discredit Patel and the SPLC investigation.

Democrats pounced onThe Atlantichit piece, launching an investigation into his behavior the same day that the SPLC indictment was announced.

And that was the point of the Atlantic story. See how that works.https://t.co/WRjlc4twIQ

According to the Department of Justice, between 2014 and 2023,the organization secretly funneled more than $3 millionin donated funds to individuals associated with violent extremist groups - including theKu Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, American Nazi Party, and the National Socialist Party of America.

"They use their donor network to raise money to purportedly dismantle violent extremist groups. However, the SPLC — the Southern Poverty Law Center — used the money they raised from their donor network to actually pay the leadership of these very groups,” Patel said at the announcement. “They used the fraudulently raised money by lying to their donor network, thousands of Americans, to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups.”

Patel added, “They attempted to hide their criminal activity from our financial banking network.They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial institutions that we rely on as everyday Americans were deceived in believing that money was not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud, but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud.”

🚨BREAKING: DOJ charges the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.The SPLC secretly funneled $3M+ in donor funds to violent racist extremist groups:-Ku Klux Klan-American Nazi Party-Aryan Nation…pic.twitter.com/0hcf2sH9LZ

The Atlanticisowned byLaurene Powell Jobs through her Emerson Collective, which holds a majority stake in the magazine. And her connection to the SPLC goes back a long time. In a 2018Washington Postprofile,the paperdescribedher very personal connection to the SPLC:

Laurene Powell made her first foray into philanthropy near the beginning of high school in West Milford. She learned of the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center and dipped into her savings to send a cashier’s check of about $20. She got a form thank-you letter back from civil rights crusader Morris Dees. “They would reliably write to me a couple of times a year,” she says. “I would read them over and over, and they told really beautiful stories. I was always animated by the notion of who gets the opportunity and who doesn’t.”

Source: ZeroHedge News