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The Southern Poverty Law Center is accused of funneling millions of dollars to at least eight leaders and members of hate groups — including a Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and a fundraiser for a neo-Nazi group — to act as informants, which one nonprofit leader likened to paying an arsonist to help put out a fire.
The Alabama-based non-profit was charged by the Department of Justice with wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering conspiracy on Tuesday for allegedly hiding the from donors the fact that doled out more than $3 million over the course of nearly a decade to “field sources” tasked with infiltrating violent extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced Wednesday.
The field sources — or “Fs” — “secretly paid” by SPLC between 2014 and 2023, the indictment claims.
America First Legal president Gene Hamilton, a former DOJ official, told The Post Wednesday it’s unprecedented for a tax-exempt nonprofit to use donor funding to pay informants in violent extremist groups
“I’ve seen some leftists talking about, seen some chatter on social media and elsewhere saying, ‘Oh this is a commonly used tactic amongst the government for years to infiltrate organizations,'” added the lawyer for the conservative group. “That’s one thing if it’s the government — the government can prosecute people.”
Hamilton likened it to paying the proverbial arsonist to help put out a fire.
He said it would be like if his own MAGA-tied group was secretly giving money to DEI officials to set up more DEI programs — while raising money to fight against DEI.
“It’s mind bogglingly dumb,” he said.
Liora Rez, the founder of StopAntisemitism, said that SPLC’s work fighting antisemitism appeared to have fallen off in recent years. He was infuriated by the allegations.
“It’s unimaginable to us that a civil rights group would gin up fake bigotry in order to solicit donations from concerned Americans,” he said.
“If this is what the SPLC did, it is shameful and outrageous.”
SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement Tuesday that the organization was being politically targeted and claimed the Trump administration was weaponizing the DOJ.
Fair maintained the payments were for “confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”
Among the informants identified — but not named — in the indictment is an “Imperial Wizard” of The United Klans of America — a hate group the SPLC claimed in a 2013 article was responsible for the 1963 Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four young girls.
Several other people in leadership roles of exteremist groups were allegedly covertly being bankrolled by the SPLC, the court papers charge.
One informant was part of an “online leadership chat group” organizing the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and ended up posting racist comments at the SPLC’s behest while also coordinating rides for others to attend, per the indictment.
In total, SPLC paid the informant $270,000 between 2015 and 2023, the papers claim.
A veteran informant from the neo-Nazi National Alliance was paid $1 million over the same period and assisted SPLC at one point by stealing 25 boxes of documents from the violent extremist group’s headquarters, the filing alleges.
He worked as a fundraiser for the neo-Nazi group, according to the DOJ.
The records formed the basis for a subsequent story on the nonprofit’s “Hatewatch” blog.
SPLC then paid a second informant at the same organization $6,000 to take the fall for the theft, the indictment claims.
Another informant received more than $300,000 between 2014 and 2020, while serving as a National Socialist Movement officer and member of the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the court papers allege.
One former chairman of the National Alliance was paid $140,000 from SPLC between 2016 and 2023 while being featured as part of the nonprofit’s “Extremist Files,” the indictment claims.
The page lists William Pierce as the founder and chairman of the group until his death in 2002. Erich Gliebe and Shaun Walker were subsequent chairmen.
A former director of the Aryan Nations who also was a member of the Ku Klux Klan was also featured in the SPLC’s “Extremist Files” — despite getting paid $70,000 between 2014 and 2016, the court docs claim.
A national president of the American Front — who was convicted of cross-burning by the feds — received $19,000 from the SPLC between 2016 and 2019, the indictment alleges.
And an “Exalted Cyclops” in the Ku Klux Klan was outed as part of a prior court case for having received $3,500 from SPLC, the filing claims.
Another $160,000 was funneled to other violent extremist group leaders — including an ex-Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the court papers allege.
At the same time as some of those payments, the Biden DOJ was also courting SPLC for help on cases in its Civil Rights Division and receiving exclusive access to federal hate crime databases, The Post previously reported based on Freedom of Information Act records obtained by AFL.
Attorneys in the division often solicited SPLC officials advice about issues they should be “tracking” and even invited the left-wing nonprofit to attend quarterly departmental meetings.
“By propping up and paying these particular actors sums of money to do the very things that they were supposed to be combating, they create a narrative,” Hamilton noted. “They create a justification for their existence, and then they, you know, do some kind of government action.”
“They’re very intimately connected with the Civil Rights Division and the FBI during the last administration,” he added, likening the effort to the school board memo “that justified government action to go after parents” who were protesting education issues.
The SLPC didn’t return a request for comment.
— Additional report by Carl Campanile
English (US)