The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted this week on federal fraud charges from a years-long alleged covert paid informant program that Justice Department officials said allocated millions of dollars in donations to a network of informants affiliated with or closely tied to White supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.The 11-count indictment accuses the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealed money laundering.According to the Justice Department, the SPLC sent some $3 million to its paid informants between 2014 and 2023, including people affiliated with the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America and the Aryan Nations-linked Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, among others.Senior Trump administration officials took aim at the covert paid informant program, which funneled outside donations, at least in part, to informants affiliated with the same extremist groups the SPLC was founded decades earlier to oppose.SPLC FACES BLOWBACK FROM ‘HATE MAP’ TARGETS AFTER DOJ FRAUD INDICTMENT"As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups," acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Tuesday at a news conference. "It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred."The SPLC's paid informant program funded individuals with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Party of America and others, including a member of an online "leadership chat group" that helped plan the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, officials said.Here are the top five most eye-popping paid informants revealed in this week's indictment.Among the paid informants identified in the indictment is a member of an online "leadership chat group" that Blanche said helped plan the deadly 2017 Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The individual, referred to only as "F-37," attended the event at the direction of the SPLC and was paid more than $270,000 for his or her work as an informant between 2015 and 2023, according to the indictment. The indictment alleges that the individual shared "racist social media posts and helped organize transportation to events" associated with the deadly rally.The news that the informant helped coordinate logistics, at least in some small part, for the deadly rally while under SPLC supervision is significant, especially given that the aftermath of the event prompted a new influx of donations to the nonprofit."They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups — even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes," FBI Director Kash Patel said.
"That is illegal, and this is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved."SUPREME COURT CLEARS PATH FOR DOJ TO ERASE STEVE BANNON'S JAN 6 CONVICTIONOne longtime member of the National Alliance, a White supremacist group tied to multiple violent attacks, profited handsomely from the SPLC in his role as a paid informant.According to the indictment, SPLC paid the National Alliance member more than $1 million over a nine-year period for his role, which included clandestine activities such as breaking into the group's headquarters to steal some 25 boxes of documents, which he photocopied and distributed to the SPLC.The group appears to have later used those documents to create a report about the National Alliance.After the stolen documents were utilized partly in public, the SPLC allegedly paid another National Alliance member $6,000 to falsely take responsibility for the theft.The National Alliance and the writings of its founder have been closely associated with a litany of violent attacks since the 1980s, including a 1999 multi-state shooting spree targeting minorities and Jewish Americans, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.TRUMP ADMIN AGENCIES COORDINATING TO EXPOSE BIDEN ADMIN’S ‘PROLIFIC AND DANGEROUS’ WEAPONIZATION OF GOVERNMENTThe SPLC also shelled out more than $140,000 to a paid informant who chaired the National Alliance neo-Nazi group. The indictment accuses the SPLC of funneling tens of thousands of dollars to the individual between 2016 and 2023.At least some of the payments were made at the same time the National Alliance chairman himself was listed on the SPLC's website as part of its public Extremist File website, a striking and somewhat ironic fact given that the site was warning the public about how dangerous the individual was.Among the paid informants was an "Imperial Wizard" from the United Klans of America, a White supremacist group the SPLC has linked to the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls and injured more than a dozen others.Martin Luther King Jr. described the bombing, which exploded 19 sticks of p