Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson served on the board of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) during the time it allegedly defrauded donors by paying “informants” in groups it deemed “extremist.”

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that a grand jury in Alabama had indicted the SPLC on 11 counts, including wire fraud, making false statements to financial institutions and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

Benson, who is running for the Democratic nomination to succeed Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer,servedon the SPLC’s board of directors from 2014 to 2019 and alsoworkedfor the group as an investigative reporter, where she reportedly infiltrated white supremacist groups.

“Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation and the National Alliance,” theindictmentreads, going on to allege that one organizer of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was a “field source” for the group.

The indictment alleges that the SPLC paid these informants $3,000,000 between 2014 and 2023, which includes Benson’s 2014-2019 tenure on the group’s board of directors.

A spokesman for Benson in the Michigan Secretary of State’s office referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to Benson’s gubernatorial campaign for comment. Benson’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

In her 2025 memoir, Benson said that during her time as an “investigative reporter” for the SPLC, she infiltrated white supremacist groups by posing as a freelance journalist, maintaining that her work thwarted plots and caused the collapse of one such group.

“I developed a deep understanding of the ways that extremist rhetoric and ideology lead to actual violence directed at individuals, communities, and, sometimes, entire nations,” Benson claimed in “The Purposeful Warrior.”

“That understanding prepared me for what I would later face overseeing the 2020 presidential election — that there is a direct link from the violent rhetoric of leaders to the hateful acts of their followers.”

🚨HAPPENING NOW: Justice Department announces indictment against Southern Poverty Law Center (“SPLC”). Our indictment alleges SPLC secretly funneled MORE THAN $3 MILLION in funds to members of white supremacist and extremist groups.pic.twitter.com/Ifpda94f7D

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