Justice Department Indicts Southern Poverty Law Center For Paying Informants Of White Supremacist Groups

Here’s a question: If the Trump administration isn’t a white supremacist organization, then how come President Donald Trump’s thoroughly subjugated Department of Justice is prosecuting one of the nation’s most well-known civil rights organizations for using paid informants to infiltrate white supremacist organizations?

According to the New York Times, on Tuesday, the Justice Department charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with financial crimes, accusing it of defrauding donors by using their money to secretly pay informants inside extremist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. So far, no individual affiliated with SPLC has been charged in the indictment, but the organization itself is facing charges of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. 

Now, for those of us who have been paying attention to how the DOJ has been moving since the start of Trump’s second term, we already know what this is, but before we get into how the Trump administration is more upset about white supremacist groups being infiltrated and reported on than it is about those groups existing in the first place, let’s take a look at exactly what the DOJ is alleging.

From the Times:

At a news conference announcing the charges, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that from 2014 to 2023, the group made payments totaling more than $3 million to people who were affiliated with extremist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America. The law center, he added, was “doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing — not dismantling extremism, but funding it.”

The indictment, however, offers little to support the notion that the group’s payments to informants was meant to aid the extremist groups they had infiltrated.

Prosecutors describe how one informant, which the law center refers to as a field source, “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event at the direction of the S.P.L.C.”

That rally included torch-wielding marchers chanting antisemitic slogans, and violent clashes that culminated with one participant ramming his car into a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman and leaving at least 19 others injured.

The informant “made racist postings under the supervision of the S.P.L.C. and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees,” the charging document said. Between 2015 and 2023, the informant received more than $270,000 from the group, the indictment said.

Another informant affiliated with a neo-Nazi group was paid more than $1 million over a period of about nine years, according to the indictment, and in 2014 that informant stole 25 boxes of documents from an unidentified violent extremist group. The Southern Poverty Law Center later used those documents to create a report about the group.

So, essentially, the DOJ is charging the SPLC because it doesn’t think activists under deep cover should be paid to upend their lives for the cause for years on end. Well, that tracks.

Here’s another question, though: How exactly do DOJ prosecutors think the process of infiltrating an extremist group works? Because they seem to think an informant making racist posts to impress and gain the trust of racists is proof that those informants were actually real racist members of the group the whole time. Of course, they also don’t seem to understand that if an informant is stealing 25 boxes of documents from an extremist group to create a report on said group, that’s a clear sign that the informant is, indeed, an informant, not a member.

But, again, this isn’t about the law; it’s about a DOJ that has been taken over by MAGA sycophants protecting conservatism by protecting white supremacist groups, and, by extension, white supremacy.

Last week, when DOJ prosecutors were firing other DOJ prosecutors for prosecuting anti-abortion protesters accused of violence during the Biden administration, I noted in our report on the firings that “shortly after Trump was sworn into office, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division saw a mass exodus of more than 100 attorneys, who resigned from the department due to its expressed agenda to steer away from (or outright gutting) cases involving civil rights protections for Black people, people of color and other marginalized groups in order to focus on white grievance and what it perceives as anti-conservative bias.”

Since January of last year, this DOJ has gone after universities it suspected of engaging in any DEI practices, taken legal action against Democratic leaders who wouldn’t let ICE agents terrorize their cities, sought to prevent trans people from owning guns, launched an investigation into Chicago’s Black mayor because it felt he was hiring too many Black people, and investigated anti-Turning Point USA protesters, who it claimed were members of the MAGA’s favorite boogey nan group, Antifa, which, as an organization, is about as real as the actual boogey man.

Last year, this same DOJ ended a settlement agreement regarding wastewater issues in a mostly Black rural Alabama county, citing the White House’s anti-DEI directive, all because environmental racism was addressed during the case. It also made the decision to end Biden-era police-accountability agreements with Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky., that came as a result of extensive investigations following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, which it did one day after it announced the approval of a nearly $5 million settlement for the family of slain Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt.

So, yeah — the Trump administration is a white supremacist group, and the DOJ is its weaponized legal arm.

Anyway, the SPLC responded to the DOJ’s indictment in a statement denouncing it and the department.

 “We have recently received and are reviewing the charges; however, after today’s Department of Justice press conference we are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC – an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multi-racial democracy where we can all live and thrive. 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. To be clear, this program saved lives,” the group’s statement read, according to CNN. “The actions by the DOJ will not shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the Civil Rights movement becomes a reality for all. SPLC will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff and our work; we will continue to fight hate; and we will continue to envision and create a safer and more just world.”

SEE ALSO:

Trump Admin’s Attack On Civil Rights Groups Is A Call To Action 

Trump’s DOJ Accuses DOJ Prosecutors Under Biden Of ‘Weaponizing’ FACE Act