The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment on Tuesday charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud and related offenses, alleging the civil rights nonprofit funneled millions to individuals affiliated with white supremacist and extremist groups between 2014 and 2023 to “manufacture extremism.”
The indictment alleges that the SPLC, which is headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., publicly claimed a commitment to “the dismantling of white supremacy and confronting hate across the country” but that “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.”
A federal grand jury in Alabama charged the Montgomery-based nonprofit with 11 counts, including wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to prosecutors.
“As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups”, said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a press conference on Tuesday. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
The document states that the organization maintained “field sources” embedded in extremist groups, including one, paid approximately $270,000, who “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation” to the 2017 Unite the Right Charlottesville rally, which resulted in one person’s death.
It claims that donors “were not told that some of the donated funds were to be used by the SPLC to pay high-level leaders of violent extremist groups.”
One field source listed in the indictment was an “Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.” Another was “an officer in the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club” and was paid more than $300,000 by the SPLC.
A field source listed as F-30, “led the National Socialist Party of America, was the former director of a faction of the Aryan Nations and a former member of the KKK,” according to the indictment.
It alleges that F-30 was paid more than $70,000 between 2014 and 2016, overlapping with a time period in which the individual “was featured on the SPLC’s ‘Extremist File’ webpage.”
Prosecutors further allege the SPLC moved the funds through shell entities and bank accounts with no legitimate business activity “designed to conceal the true nature, source, ownership and control of fraudulently obtained donated money.”
Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, called the allegations “incredible.”
“The supply of right-wing ‘hate’ was so low that a left-wing ‘anti-hate’ group had to subsidize it, so it could then raise money to fight it,” Rufo stated. “If these allegations are true, the SPLC is likely to be the largest single funder of white nationalist extremism in the United States. One hopes it will mark an extremely poetic ending for the group, which, one hopes, will end in bankruptcy and, for some, prison.”
Bryan Fair, board chair for the SPLC, responded to the allegations, claiming the group’s use of field sources, which he called “informants,” was part of its mission in collecting vital information to stop threats, and that it shared what it learned from those sources with federal law enforcement, including the FBI.
“These individuals risked their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation’s most violent and extremist groups,” Fair said.
