Full disclosure: I am not a fan of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). While I recognize the important work they did for the cause of desegregation and dismantling an unjust system of racial discrimination, as well as their essential contribution in reducing the Ku Klux Klan in the United States to a shadow of its former self, in recent decades, their mission and identity have changed. The SPLC is now simply a political organization of the left attempting to impose on the country the left’s agenda. Of course, they have every right to do this, just as organizations on the right do. It’s called participating in the American political process. What is wrong about the SPLC is that they exploit their well-deserved laurels from past work to claim a credibility they no longer possess, or ought not possess, in order to defame and mislabel as “hate groups” various other organizations, including political organizations, that hold to and work toward a different political agenda. Conservative groups have often been labeled “hate groups” for campaigning for a definition of marriage in the United States that has been the definition of marriage for the Judeo-Christian tradition for three millennia and was the definition of marriage for the entire Western world until about fifteen to twenty years ago. I have written a couple of posts in the past on the SPLC. I feel obliged to let you know, in writing this post, that I am not sympathetic.

On April 21, a Grand Jury in Montgomery, AL indicted the SPLC on eleven counts of “wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.” In a joint press conference announcing the charges against the SPLC 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,” while FBI Director Kash Patel stood by. Patel had announced last October that the FBI would cut all ties with the SPLC, an organization he described as a “partisan smear machine.” According to the Grand Jury indictment, the SPLC paid eight members of the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America and other extremist, white supremacist groups at least $3 million between the years 2014 and 2023.

Basically, the SPLC is being accused of asking people for donations to support their work of fighting white supremacy in the U.S. while paying members of white supremacist groups to organize activities and continue their mission. This is rather like a window company paying thugs to go around town throwing rocks through windows to secure continued work for the window company. As one who worked with a number of social justice organizations as a young man (may I still say “younger man”? Nah, prolly not!), I have long observed that, for many such organizations, after initial good intentions and a few years of occasionally successful work, eventually the main justification for the continued existence of the organization became its continued existence.

To be sure, there are those in the press working hard to come to the aid of the SPLC. The “Alabama Reflector” newspaper published a piece where they wrote that “several experts” are accusing the Trump administration of targeting the SPLC as a political opponant, and who doubt the strength of the case against the SPLC. Then they quote one who does so. Cassandra Burke Robertson, Director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University law school, offered her assessment: “The conduct at the core of the indictment, paying confidential sources inside violent extremist groups to gather intelligence, is something federal law enforcement does as a matter of course. Charging a civil rights organization criminally for doing the same thing, in this political context, strikes me as an abuse of the criminal law.” Ms. Robertson speculates that the indictment against the SPLC may backfire against Trump, assuming that a political takedown is the motive behind the indictment, in that it likely will result in more donations to the SPLC.

John C. Coffee Jr, law professor at Columbia University, describes the case against the SPLC as “very thin.” Mr. Coffee claims that the SPLC “was under no obligation to disclose to the world that it was paying secret agents to advise it about the activities of violent organizations. That it paid agents to inform it does not imply that it was supporting these organizations, even if the agents (with mixed motives) gave some of the payments to the organizations.” Finally, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who is retiring after his current term, speculates that, “The Trump administration has brought this paper-thin indictment for one reason: the Southern Poverty Law Center has a long history of exposing violent white supremacist extremists who are allies of this White House. I am confident that this vindictive prosecution will fail, just like the Administration’s other efforts to target the President’s political enemies.”

Considering Durkins’ accusation that this is simply a politically motivated case against the SPLC, I would point out that it was not the Trump administration that found and exposed the activities the SPLC is accused of. It was the bank. During an audit in 2020, one of the banks with whom the SPLC created accounts found what they considered suspicious activity (more on that later) and reported it to the feds. So, while I’m sure Trump isn’t losing any sleep or crying any tears over their current troubles, it was the bank that initially exposed the alleged fraud, not the Trump administration.

Personally, I wonder if Professor Robertson and Professor Coffee are a bit too optimistic, considering what is actually in the indictment. Prof. Robertson’s claim that paying confidential sources to gather intelligence is not a crime is true, I guess. I’m not an attorney. But “the conduct at the core of the indictment” is not that. The conduct at the core of the indictment includes: creating bank accounts under the names of non-existent organizations in order to cover what the SPLC was doing with the money, which it was using to pay white supremacists. That is illegal. The SPLC is not a federal, or any other type, of law enforcement agency. It’s a charity. It solicits funds from donors. While it’s not illegal, I assume, for a charity to pay insiders of organizations for information on those organization, it is illegal to create bank accounts under the names of non-existent organizations in order to cover up the payments your making to them, even if to supposedly protect them and your own organization from harm. Charities are obliged to maintain a certain level of transparency with what they do with the money donated to them. This ain’t that. When the bank audit exposed this activity in 2020, the SPLC fessed up the next year, admitting that the organizations the bank accounts were created for did not exist and that the SPLC actually controlled the funds in those accounts. They also closed most of the accounts in 2020. So, if the discovery of the truth behind the accounts was discovered in a 2020 bank audit, and SPLC admitted to their actions in 2021, and the bank, as would be required, reported this to the feds at the time, why didn’t the DOJ act on it then? My guess? Because this was during the Biden administration. Do I need so say more? Nah, I didn’t think so. But Trump is now president and the statute of limitations on this charge is ten years, so there you go. The charge here is that the SPLC lied to a federally insured bank by claiming that the non-existent organizations 1) existed and 2) were under the “sole proprietorship” of one of its employees, identified as Employee 1 in the indictment. So, Employee 1 claimed that he or she had sole control over these accounts, but he or she apparently didn’t, as the accounts were controlled by the SPLC and the organizations didn’t actually exist, anyway. You can’t have sole proprietorship of an organization that doesn’t exist. So, yeah, when I was growing up, my mother called that lying.

The other point both Prof. Robertson and Prof. Coffee make is that these payments were simply made for information on these organizations. The indictment says otherwise. For instance, according to the indictment, the SPLC called their informants “field sources” or “Fs”, and gave each a number. But at least some of these “Fs” did far more with the money they were paid by the SPLC than simply inform on their organizations. According to the indictment: “F-37 was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia [where an anti-racist counter protester was killed by a white supremacist] and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC. F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-37 more than $270,000.00.” Helping to organize a racist rally, attending that racist rally, encouraging others to attend that racist rally, and providing transportation for others to attend that racist rally is doing a great deal more than simply providing information on the racist organization. One of the more cynical charges is that the SPLC was using the images and information of two white supremacists to gin up donations, telling donors that these people needed to stopped, while at the same time they were paying those two white supremacists. Hence, the fraud charges. I can’t speak to the wire fraud charges. I’m not that knowledgeable of such things.

So, is this an attempt by Trump and his cronies to go after a political enemy? Or is it an attempt by the DOJ to right a wrong that should have been righted under the Biden administration but wasn’t because the Biden administration and the SPLC were tight? Are the press and “experts” right that the SPLC is a righteous organization that shouldn’t have to suffer unwarranted targeting for political ends? Or is the liberal press giving cover for an organization that considered itself above the law because it fights for the correct causes?

We may never find out the truth behind those questions. But it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.