US Southern Poverty Law Center charged with fraud over use of paid informants

By Jana Winter, Julia Harte and Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON, April 21 (Reuters) – The Trump administration obtained a criminal indictment on Tuesday charging the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights group that tracks political extremists, with defrauding its own donors by using paid informants to infiltrate far-right organizations.

The 11-count indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Alabama, levels charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering against the SPLC as an organization. No individuals or other entities were named as defendants.

The 55-year-old law center, which had long shared information it collected with the FBI and other law enforcement groups before the Trump administration cut ties with the SPLC six months ago, decried the charges as “false allegations.”

“Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is and we believe it is also among the most important work we do,” the organization’s interim CEO and president, Bryan Fair, said in a statement.

He said the SPLC was reviewing the 14-page indictment, but added that its program of paid informants has “saved lives.”

Announcing the indictment at a news conference, acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the SPLC of “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

The criminal charges stem from fraud the indictment said the non-profit law center committed by covertly funneling more than $3 million from donations to the members of hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi organizations, between 2014 and 2023.

According to the indictment, the payments amounted to fraud because the SPLC opened bank accounts connected to fake entities to disguise the source of the payments and deceived donors by soliciting contributions under false pretenses.

In a video statement released hours before the charges were announced, Fair defended the use of paid informants to collect information – a practice the FBI says it uses in its own investigations – as necessary to protect SPLC staff from potential violence.

Fair said his organization had refrained from widely publicizing such methods in order to protect the informants themselves and their families.

AIMING JUSTICE SYSTEM AT ADVERSARIES

Tuesday’s indictment marks the latest bid by the Justice Department under President Donald Trump to use the criminal justice system against his perceived adversaries.

The SPLC, formed in the early 1970s to defend the legal rights of Black Americans following the U.S. civil rights reforms of the 1960s, has frequently accused Trump officials of trafficking in conspiracy theories and racism.

Trump administration officials and conservative figures have in the past criticized the Alabama-based SPLC for labeling some far-right entities as hate groups.

FBI Director Kash Patel in October ended a years-long working relationship between his agency and the SPLC, calling the group a “partisan smear machine” that had been used to defame people and inspire violence.

Patel’s action came weeks after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, whose conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, was included in SPLC’s “Hate Map” and described as an anti-government group.

The Trump administration has launched a multi-pronged effort to investigate the activities and funding streams of liberal or left-wing organizations it accuses of promoting violence or espousing views it defines as domestic terrorism.

Targets of what Trump’s critics see as a broad crackdown on free speech have included supporters of pro-Palestinian protests and liberal nonprofits opposed to his agenda, including his immigration and climate policies.

In his recorded statement early on Tuesday, Fair said his organization was aware that it was facing a criminal investigation and possible charges over the use of paid informants.

“Today, the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation’s most vulnerable people and any organization like ours that stands in the breach,” Fair said in the video. “We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.”

(Reporting by Jana Winter, Julia Harte and Andrew Goudsward; Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Will Dunham, Nia Williams and Chris Reese)