A federal grand jury has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts, including wire and bank fraud, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced at a Tuesday evening press conference.
Earlier on Tuesday in the Middle District of Alabama, a grand jury returned an 11-count indictment charging the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, Blanche announced from the podium.
The SPLC, a nonprofit group that says it fights for racial justice by working to dismantle white supremacy, represents itself publicly as monitoring extremist groups and providing research to law enforcement aimed at disrupting those networks.
But according to the indictment by the Department of Justice, the acting attorney general said the group “was not dismantling these groups; it was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
Blanche pointed to one example outlined in the indictment, alleging that the organization paid a leadership figure involved in organizing the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in one death and dozens of injuries. That individual allegedly received about $270,000 over eight years.
In total, prosecutors allege the group paid at least $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to eight individuals affiliated with extremist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations-linked groups, and others.
The payments were routed through a network of shell entities created by the organization, according to the indictment. Blanche also said the group established bank accounts under fictitious organizations with no legitimate business purpose, moving money through multiple layers before distributing funds via prepaid cards.
“This was designed to shield the source of those funds,” Blanche said, adding that the alleged scheme forms the basis for the conspiracy to commit money laundering charges.
Blanche also said the fraud charges stem from how the nonprofit group solicited donations. As a 501(c)(3) organization, he said, it is required to accurately represent how funds will be used. The indictment alleges the group failed to disclose that donor funds were being used to pay individuals tied to extremist groups.
“At no point did they tell donors they were giving money to these organizations or their leadership,” Blanche said. “That’s the fraud.”
When asked whether prosecutors were alleging the SPLC had sought to use extremist groups to shape public perceptions of right-wing extremism, Blanche declined to go beyond the charges laid out in the case.
“What the Southern Poverty Law Center has said over the years is available for the world to see on their website,” Blanche told the Washington Examiner. “The indictment speaks for itself. I’m not going to talk outside the four corners of the indictment.”
FBI Director Kash Patel, who stood next to Blanche during the press event, said the alleged scheme amounted to a “massive fraud operation” that misled donors while enriching individuals connected to the organization’s activities.
“They used the money they raised from thousands of Americans to actually pay the leadership of these very groups,” Patel said, adding that investigators traced more than a decade of financial activity tied to the case.
Patel also alleged that in at least one instance, funds were used in ways that facilitated additional criminal activity, though he declined to provide details beyond what is outlined in the indictment.
The indictment names only the organization as a defendant, but Blanche said the investigation remains ongoing and could expand to include individuals.
Blanche also revealed that the investigation into the group began years ago, was halted during the Biden administration for reasons he said he did not know, and was later restarted.
“It’s been going on for a long time,” Blanche said. “There was a time that it was shut down for a while during the last administration. I don’t know why. And it was started again over the past year or so.”
Criticism of the SPLC hit a peak last year following the assassination of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, after backlash erupted online over the organization labeling the conservative activist group as a “hard right” group, among others, that it handed extreme political labels.
Patel also announced in October that the FBI would sever its ties with the SPLC after it previously worked with agents to identify and provide tips on certain instances of domestic extremism.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Emily Coody Marks, according to court records.
