The powerful left-wing NGO accused by the US Department of Justice of spying on far-right extremist groups has dismissed the allegations as purely political.
The influential Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted by a federal grand jury for fraud and money laundering. The civil rights organization is accused of concealing significant amounts of money from donors, which were used to spy on several far-right groups by generously rewarding informants.
According to the indictment, the SPLC allegedly gave over $3 million to members of the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Movement, an American Nazi organization with only a few dozen members, and the Aryan Nations, a group of white supremacists. The document states that the SPLC, for example, paid over $270,000 to a person who participated in the white supremacists’ dramatic rally in Charlottesville in 2017, where a counter-protester was killed in a car-ramming attack.
While the FBI investigation caught the attention of the grand jury that issued the indictment, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI head Kash Patel are convinced the case is clear. “The SPLC is using racism to justify its existence,” accused Blanche during a press conference on Tuesday.
“They lied to their donors, promising to dismantle violent extremist groups, and instead financially supported the leaders of these groups, even using funds to incite them to commit federal and state crimes,” added Kash Patel. The organization defended itself by denouncing false allegations and condemning a political attack from the Trump administration.
Located in Alabama, the SPLC operates with a massive budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. Founded in 1971 to combat segregation in the Southern states, the group aimed to “dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and promote human rights for all” according to its charter. It established an observatory called “KlanWatch,” later transformed into an intelligence center to spy on dangerous groups in collaboration with federal authorities, facing backlash from radical groups like the Ku Klux Klan attempting to burn down its offices in 1983.
In recent years, conservative activists have accused the SPLC of expanding its definition of “hate groups” to include conservative organizations like Focus on the Family, an anti-LGBT movement advocating Christian family values.
After Donald Trump’s election, the FBI under Kash Patel’s leadership severed ties with the organization, labeling it a “partisan smear machine.” However, the serious charge of opaque financing of extremist groups to perpetuate the hate the NGO claims to combat is even more severe.
The indictment by a grand jury is just the beginning of the judicial process that will determine whether the organization indeed intended to “instrumentalize racism” and if the lack of transparency towards donors was illegal. The organization’s director, Bryan Fair, defended the payments’ confidentiality on Tuesday, stating it was essential to protect informants.
