(AFP) – The Trump Justice Department announced the indictment on Tuesday of a prominent US civil rights organization over its use of donor money to pay confidential informants in extremist groups. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) faces charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Blanche alleged that the SPLC paid at least $8 million to eight individuals between 2014 and 2023 who were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Party of America, and other hate groups. “The SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups,” Blanche said at a press conference.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” he said. “It was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing — not dismantling extremism but funding it.”
Bryan Fair, the interim president and CEO of the SPLC, said the group, whose stated mission is to fight white supremacy and create a multiracial democracy, will not be “intimidated into silence” and will “vigorously defend ourselves.”
“For 55 years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has stood as a beacon of hope, fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice,” Fair said in a video message. “We are therefore unsurprised to be the latest organization targeted by this administration,” he said. “They have made no secret of who they want to protect and who they want to destroy.”
He acknowledged that the SPLC had used confidential informants in the past “to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups” but said it no longer does so.
“When we began working with informants we were living in the shadow of the height of the civil rights movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” he said. “This use of informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence,” Fair said. “We frequently shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement.”
President Donald Trump has been accused by critics since taking office for a second time of launching criminal investigations of individuals and groups he sees as political or ideological opponents. Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, recently defended the probes, saying “it is true that some of them involve men, women, and entities that the president, in the past, has had issues with and believes should be investigated.”
“That is his right, and indeed, it is his duty to do that,” he said.
© 2024 AFP
