President Donald Trump's Justice Department has charged a prominent watchdog of extremist groups with fraud, alleging that their use of paid informants to obtain intelligence on extremist activity actually funded the very hate groups they fight.
According to CNBC, the indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center "was returned Tuesday by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Alabama ... The SPLC, which is a non-profit civil rights group, is charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of money laundering."
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche proclaimed at a press conference, “The SPLC was not dismantling the groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
Organization head Bryan Fair already confirmed the existence of a criminal probe against them before the indictment came down, saying, “Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”
The SPLC has been a vital source of information for years on hate groups and the figures leading them. However, it has increasingly been a target of fury by Republicans, who dispute its extremist designations of certain groups with closer ties to mainstream Republican politics, like the virulently antigay Family Research Council and Moms For Liberty.
Some Republican officials even accused the Biden administration of working behind the scenes to encourage the SPLC to issue hate group status to certain conservative organizations.