Almost immediately after the mob at Donald Trump diehards smashed its way into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the right-wing noise machine moved into action to downplay what the world saw unfold in real time. Now, five years later, with a giant assist from the Department of Justice, conservative media is again attempting to launder reality through conspiracy about another dark day in the first Trump administration — the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — with some saying the event was a false flag operation. In one of the most brazen escalations yet in the administration’s war on its perceived enemies, the DOJ, created in 1870 to enforce the civil rights of formerly enslaved Americans in the South, announced the criminal prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization founded in Montgomery, Alabama, the former capital of the Confederacy, and credited with financially crippling the modern Klan.
On April 21, a federal grand jury in Alabama indicted the SPLC on 11 counts — six counts of wire fraud, four counts of false statements to a federally insured bank and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. But it is a case built to win on cable news, not court. The core allegation, stripped of its melodramatic framing, is that the SPLC used paid informants to infiltrate hate groups and ran those payments through shell accounts to protect the identities of people who were living among Klansmen and neo-Nazis.
The SPLC has long relied on informants to infiltrate organizations, sometimes in coordination with federal authorities. As far back as 1996, the New York Times reported that the organization had “spies” embedded in white nationalist gatherings. Related SPLC indictment lends support to hate groups The federal government’s legal argument, such as it is, falls apart the moment anyone with prosecutorial experience examines it.
Kyle Boynton, an attorney who worked previously as both a federal civil rights prosecutor and an FBI agent, told CBS News, “I don’t think any prosecutor with white-collar experience would look at this indictment and believe it makes out the elements of a crime.” To prove the wire fraud charges, the government needs to demonstrate that the SPLC made material misrepresentations to its donors — in other words, that donors gave money expecting one thing and received something meaningfully different. The vague fundraising language cited in the indictment is likely not strong enough to show the organization made affirmative false statements, and the use of paid informants to obtain intelligence about hate groups does not on its face run contrary to its mission statement.
While the indictment struggles to identify any actual victims, more than 20 verified donors told The Intercept that using funds to gather intelligence on hate groups was precisely what they expected the organization to do. Some experts predict the charges could be dismissed before the case makes it to trial. Former Justice Department fraud section attorney William Johnston, speaking to CBS News, put it plainly: The theory that paying informants to dismantle hate groups somehow contradicts the mission of dismantling hate groups is “very stretched.” None of this matters to the people who ordered these charges.
What the indictment does do, quite effectively, is provide a scaffolding for a broader disinformation campaign. None of this matters to the people who ordered these charges. What the indictment does do, quite effectively, is provide a scaffolding for a broader disinformation campaign.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed on Tuesday that the SPLC was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” And almost immediately, conservative media figures and politicians seized on it as proof of all of their long-standing conspiracies. On Truth Social, Trump said if the indictment against the SPLC is correct, the 2020 election should be vacated. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went on Fox News to claim the SPLC “transformed into a criminal organization run by fraudsters who are paying for and inciting the very racism they claim to stand against.” FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “The charity that supposedly fought the Klan funded the Klan.
The charity that supposedly fought Neo-Nazis funded Neo-Nazis. That’s the ultimate hypocrisy.” On Fox News’ “The Five,” co-host Jesse Watters called racism in America a “big fat psyop,” while Greg Gutfeld conceded “there probably is a bigot somewhere. But you guys created a false flag, that there was this immense movement going on in this country that then put targets on people like Charlie Kirk’s back, and he’s dead!” Want more sharp takes on politics?
Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. “Charlottesville was staged by the SPLC,” far-right influencer Jack Po