The Department of Justice has announced charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center for six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of money laundering. The group was also found to be funding white supremacist groups to stoke racial hatred.

“According to the charges in the indictment,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, “the SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups, as the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups, it was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

“The indictment describes his conduct in detail, but one troubling example is that the SPLC was paying a member of the leadership group that planned that unite the right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, that resulted in the death of one person, and injured dozens more,” Blanche added. 

“The indictment describes his conduct in detail, but one troubling example is that the SPLC was paying a member of the leadership group that planned that unite the right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, that resulted in the death of one person, and injured dozens more,” Blanche added.  

Blanche said that this person got a total of $275,000 over the course of eight years. Blanche said that the SPLC paid out $3 million to people between the years of 2014 and 2023 to at least eight people that were affiliated with various hate groups like the KKK and other neo-Nazi groups. 

Earlier on Tuesday, the SPLC said that it was under investigation by the DOJ. “Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” the organization said in a statement.  

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