By Jana Winter, Julia Harte and Andrew Goudsward
April 21 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday brought criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks extremist groups, accusing the group of defrauding its donors in its use of paid informants to infiltrate far-right organizations.
The indictment, filed in federal court in Alabama, includes charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. It accuses SPLC of duping its donors by making roughly $3 million in covert payments to members of extremist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups between 2014 and 2023.
The indictment alleges the payments amounted to fraud because the SPLC used fake entities to conceal the source of the payments and solicited donations by claiming to be dismantling far-right groups. The head of the SPLC said on Tuesday it used paid informants to gather information on extremist organizations.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a press conference. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
The 11-count federal indictment marks the Trump Justice Department’s latest attempt to use the legal system against prominent adversaries. The SPLC, formed in the early 1970s to defend the legal rights of Black Americans following the U.S. civil rights reforms of the 1960s, has frequently accused Trump officials of trafficking in conspiracy theories and racism.
The SPLC has for years tipped local law enforcement and the FBI about extremists, and informed the public in reports and alerts. Earlier on Tuesday, SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said in a video statement that the Justice Department was investigating the group and its “focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.” Fair said such measures were necessary to protect SPLC staff from violence.
The Trump administration has launched a multi-pronged effort to investigate the activities and funding streams of liberal or left-wing organizations it accuses of promoting violence or espousing views it defines as domestic terrorism.
Rights advocates have raised free speech concerns under President Donald Trump’s administration, citing his crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests, and his threats against liberal nonprofits and groups opposed to his agenda, including his immigration and climate policies.
Trump administration officials and conservative figures have criticized the Alabama-based SPLC for labeling some far-right entities hate groups. FBI Director Kash Patel in October ended a years-long working relationship between his agency and the SPLC, calling the group a “partisan smear machine” that had been used to defame people and inspire violence.
Patel’s action came weeks after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, whose conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, was included in SPLC’s “Hate Map” and described as an anti-government group.
An SPLC spokesperson declined to comment beyond Fair’s recorded remarks.
Fair said the group did not widely share the fact that it used such sources in order to protect the informants themselves and their families.
“Today, the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation’s most vulnerable people and any organization like ours that stands in the breach,” Fair said in the video. “We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.”
(Reporting by Julia Harte; editing by Will Dunham, Nia Williams and Chris Reese)
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