DOJ is aligning itself with the KKK and other extremists by indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center
Running a confidential informant program inside hate groups is expensive and dangerous work. For about four decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has done it anyway. Its work contributed to the dismantling of the Ku Klux Klan as a political force. The SPLC’s work is so important that it routinely shared what it learned with the FBI. On Tuesday, the Trump Justice Department indicted them for it.
A federal grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama returned an 11-count indictment charging the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of false statements to a federally insured bank, and one count of conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, taking a break from shielding Epstein’s sex trafficking network from public scrutiny, announced the charges alongside FBI Director Kash Patel, whose flimsy defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic has earned him the online nickname of “J. Edgar Boozer.”
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Blanche told the cameras. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked.” Of note, the federal government, through the DOJ and FBI specifically, have also paid confidential informants inside hate groups. [Continue reading…]
By the 1980s, the civil rights group was monitoring white supremacist organizations in the US. The effort, initially called “Klanwatch” and focused on the Ku Klux Klan, was later renamed the “Intelligence Project”, and expanded to include other extremist groups.
Many of the groups did not appreciate being called out, monitored and sometimes sued by the center. Members of the KKK tried to burn down the center’s Montgomery offices on 28 July 1983, in retaliation for lawsuits filed against Klan groups.
The fire damaged the building, office equipment, the center’s law library and files. More than a year later, three KKK members were arrested in connection with the blaze, and all three plead guilty and were sentenced to prison.
The center previously used paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities, often sharing it with local and federal law enforcement, [SPLC CEO Bryan] Fair said. They were used to monitor threats of violence, he said, adding that the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants. [Continue reading…]
Lemme get this straight
A civil rights group is being criminally charged for paying informants to get info about the KKK & neo-Nazis that was then shared with law enforcement?
That's basically what the FBI does!
Should they prosecute themselves?
youtu.be/25dlBorkAy4?…
— Norm Eisen (@normeisen.bsky.social) Apr 21, 2026 at 7:00 PM
According the AG Blanche, “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” This is some whacked out far-right fantasy. Hard to imagine this theory will hold up in court, but the lives of paid informants who infiltrated hate groups will be at risk.
www.justice.gov/opa/pr/feder…— Barb McQuade (@barbmcquade.bsky.social) Apr 21, 2026 at 7:17 PM