Washington– The Southern Poverty Law Center told a federal court Tuesday that law enforcement agencies had long known about the nonprofit Paid informants to report on hate group movements, and rejected Trump administration assertions that the nonprofit funneled money to the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups without the knowledge of authorities.
the An Alabama-based non-profit organization He was indicted last week on fraud and money laundering charges. Prosecutors said the group misled donors by using their money to pay informants who served as leaders in the very hate groups the organization was founded to fight.
In its first legal defense against these charges, the group filed petitions in federal court in Alabama asking the court to order the appointment of an acting prosecutor. Todd Blanche Withdrew his statement that the government had “no information” about the informant program, and barred him from making further similar statements. Blanche made the comment in a news conference last week and later on Fox News when he announced charges against the nonprofit.
The filings detail three instances in which the SPLC says information from its informant program was shared with law enforcement to help stop the activities of racist groups. SPLC attorneys presented information from at least one of those cases during an April meeting with prosecutors, the attorneys said. The group asked Blanche to retract after he said that the authorities were kept in the dark, but the government refused, according to the group.
“The Department of Justice is well aware that the SPLC has provided useful information, through the use of its confidential informants, to law enforcement,” the group said in its filing. “The Department of Justice also knows that these confidential informants helped law enforcement put violent extremists in prison.”
Lawyers for the group said Blanche’s comments could taint the jury pool and harm the group’s right to a fair trial.
President Donald Trump has seized on the case, calling the SPLC one of the “largest political scams in American history” and linking it to his false claims that he won the 2020 election. Critics have called it a politically motivated prosecution. Arms the Ministry of Justice To punish conservative opponents.
The indictment accuses the group of secretly promoting racist groups while publicly saying it is fighting them. For example, prosecutors said a paid informant for the SPLC helped plan the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the rally at the direction of the SPLC.
But in its filings, the SPLC said it sent a 45-page “event alert” to the FBI before the rally with information gathered from the informant program, including information about the weapons of some attendees.
In one 2019 case, the SPLC said a tip from its informant program helped thwart a planned attack in Las Vegas. The group said it shared information with law enforcement that led to the FBI A man linked to the band Atomwaffen has been arrestedwhite supremacist group. A 2020 Justice Department press release said the man discussed attacking a synagogue and a bar that caters to LGBTQ customers. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment.
In another case, the SPLC said information from an informant program was passed to law enforcement and led to the conviction of a man who lied about his ties to a white supremacist group during a national security clearance application. The man, who was not identified in court documents, was working at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia in 2018 and was convicted and sentenced to prison after that tip, the group said.
SPLC attorneys said they presented evidence to prosecutors at the April 6 meeting outlining how information from the informant program was shared with law enforcement in the case.
Along with the motion to recuse, the SPLC filed a motion requesting grand jury transcripts to ensure that false statements were not used to secure an indictment. She said the mischaracterizations by the Justice Department “suggest that the grand jury was not only misled by the government’s presentation of the law, but was likely weaponized to facilitate such indictments.”
Prosecutors say the SPLC funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to informants who were leaders in the KKK, the neo-Nazi National Alliance and other hate groups. The center is accused of defrauding donors and providing false statements to set up bank accounts that were used to transfer money to informants.
Blanche said in a press conference that the group “creates the extremism it claims to oppose by paying sources to incite racial hatred.” Justice Department officials said these are the first charges in an ongoing investigation.
The center came under new scrutiny after his assassination last year Conservative activist Charlie Kirkwho founded and led Turning Point USA. The SPLC described Kirk’s group as a “case study for the far right in 2024” in a report titled “The Year of Hate and Extremism 2024.”
In a statement issued Tuesday, Brian Fair, interim president and CEO of the SPLC, said the information shared with the FBI saved lives.
“When threats and other illegal activities were detected, the SPLC immediately relayed this information to local, state and federal law enforcement officials and assisted in efforts to prevent violence and stop criminal activity,” Fair said.