The secrets Stephen Miller has kept about his role in the Trump administration may finally be revealed after a judge was handed a key FBI report.
Miller, President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff, has long shielded his White House communications from disclosure under executive privilege. Now, a court filing in federal court in Alabama threatens to crack that wall open.
The Southern Poverty Law Center — a civil rights organization the Trump administration indicted on fraud charges — obtained the FBI report through the normal discovery process. It shows the government's case against the SPLC appears to trace directly back to Miller.
The report reads almost word-for-word like a letter conservative groups sent Miller complaining about the SPLC's "Hate Map," which tracks hate groups across America. Six passages match so closely they're sometimes identical.
Miller's ire at the SPLC dates back to 2019, when the organization published a series of pieces on hundreds of emails Miller sent to Breitbart News showing he had promoted white nationalist websites and literature.
After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Miller vowed to use "every resource" at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to "identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy" liberal activist networks. Federal agencies then piled onto a local investigation of a retired activist who had posted flyers near his Arlington home. His communications about that were kept secret under executive privilege.
National security journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote on Emptywheel that the government handed SPLC — represented by attorney Abbe Lowell — proof that "Stephen Miller's grievance about being exposed as an extremist somehow led a prosecutor to test a theory whether pointing that out is itself inherently fraudulent."
The SPLC's lawyers are now asking the court to hand over all communications between Miller and the Justice Department about the organization.