The Justice Department has been accused of violating grand jury secrecy rules in a scathing filing by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The longtime extremism watchdog, which is being prosecuted by the Trump administration on charges that it defrauded their donors through the use of paid informants embedded within hate groups, was hit with a superseding indictment on Tuesday.
But in the filing on Wednesday evening, SPLC attorneys accused acting Attorney General Todd Blanche of blasting out a copy of the superseding indictment to the press before it was even docketed — which is not allowed under court rules.
"This action by Acting Attorney General Blanche’s Public Affairs Officer is all the more concerning in light of his earlier rush to begin a media campaign around the first indictment, his false statement in doing so, his need to make a correction, the motion that the SPLC filed in response, and the Court’s Order this week reminding the government of its heightened duty of candor as officers of the court," said the filing. "In light of those events, it is astounding that DOJ would not be even more vigilant in its actions directed at the media in this case. They were not."
The filing asked the judge to order Blanche and his associates "to show cause to explain their conduct here, and hold a hearing to conduct targeted fact-finding to determine whether to impose appropriate sanctions against those involved."
Already, the SPLC case has attracted intense controversy, as Blanche was accused of publicly lying about the case by saying on Fox News the group had not shared the information it got from informants with law enforcement — something the DOJ admitted it had done in court filings.