Leftist SPLC allegedly funneled $3M to KKK, Nazi groups, DOJ says
· Toronto Sun
In a sweeping indictment , FBI Director Kash Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the left-leaning nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center of committing fraud to pay members of white supremacist groups.
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A grand jury in Alabama handed down 11 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, Blanche said.
The SPLC is an American legal advocacy group that focuses on civil rights and education and tracks far-right hate groups and extremism. It has been accused in the past of lumping mainstream groups that it doesn’t like in among the hate groups it tracks, such as Turning Point USA, the advocacy group co-founded by assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The group said the indictment was an effort to weaponize the Justice Department against groups that oppose U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Today the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation’s most vulnerable people and any organization like ours that tries to stand in the breach,” SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said. “We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition.”
Money to KKK, Nazi movement: Charges
Blanche said the SPLC paid more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to at least eight people working inside groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Movement and other white supremacist groups. In some cases, he said, the source of the funding was disguised through accounts with phoney shell companies.
“It was doing the exact opposite of what its told its donors it was doing, not dismantling extremism, but funding it to carry out this scheme,” Blanche said. “SPLC created bank accounts in the name of at least five completely fictitious organizations that had no bona fide employees or legitimate business purpose.”
“The money was passed from SPLC to one sham account, to a second sham account, and then loaded onto prepaid cards to give to the members of the extremist groups,” he continued. “This was designed to shield the source of those funds, and because of this, SPLC is also charged with one count, as I said earlier, of conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
Patel added the FBI investigation showed the SPLC also tried to hide their alleged activity from banks.
“They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial institutions that we rely on as everyday Americans were deceived in believing that money was not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud, but rather fictitious entities,” Patel said. “They stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud. This is a serious and egregious violation of a group that purported to dismantle violent extremist groups, but in turn actually only fueled that hatred.”
Charlottesville connection?
According to the document, one of the informants referenced was an organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, that resulted in the death of a counterprotester. The indictment says the SPLC paid him $270,000 to inform on planning for the event.
Prosecutors also said the organization paid $1 million to a member of the neo-Nazi group National Alliance. That informant allegedly stole more than 25 boxes of records which were later used by SPLC to expose the hate group’s activities in 2014. The SPLC later paid another informant within the group $6,000 to take responsibility for the theft, the indictment claims.
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SPLC vs. Trump administration
There’s no love lost between the SPLC and the White House. The SPLC has criticized the Trump administration and claimed members of his cabinet have used their power to “roll back civil rights, deepen racial injustice, and rig the system against us.”
Republicans have accused the group of being “partisan and profitable.” Patel severed FBI ties with the group last October, saying it had “long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.”
– With files from Washington Post