What to know about the Trump Justice Department’s case against the Southern Poverty Law Center
By Hannah Rabinowitz, Devan Cole, CNN
(CNN) — The Justice Department announced charges Tuesday against the Southern Poverty Law Center, alleging the storied civil rights organization defrauded its donors by funding the extremism it claimed to be fighting.
The fraudulent scheme played out over nearly 10 years, prosecutors allege, when the Southern Poverty Law Center used more than $3 million in donor funds to secretly pay leaders of violent extremist groups to act as confidential informants without disclosing where that money was going.
The 14-page indictment, however, offered few details of how donor money that paid the informants was used to further the groups’ violent interests, or if donors felt blindsided by what their money was spent on – a glaring omission that legal experts say could spell trouble for prosecutors as they seek to secure a conviction.
The case comes several months after FBI Director Kash Patel severed the bureau’s ties with the SPLC after conservative criticism of the group intensified in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination last year. SPLC had long provided its research on hate crimes and extremism to the government, but Patel labeled it a “partisan smear machine” for the attention it paid to a political group founded by Kirk.
SPLC this week said in a statement that it “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work” against the “false allegations,” and said that their informant program saved lives over the years.
Use of informants
The Southern Poverty Law Center began its practice of using paid informants in the 1980s, the indictment says. The center says its program was kept a secret to protect the informants as they infiltrated dangerous organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation and other neo-Nazi groups.
“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” SPLC interim President and CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement Wednesday.
“There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives,” Fair said, while noting the practice has since been discontinued.
Justice Department prosecutors first started probing the center’s use of paid informants under the Biden administration, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a press conference Tuesday, but decided not to bring charges. The investigation was reopened during Trump’s second term, Blanche said, though he declined to share any reasoning as to why.
The allegations
The indictment accuses the center of making false statements to a bank so that it could create accounts through which it secretly sent donated money to informants. The accounts were created under fake business names, such as “Tech Writers Group” and “Rare Books Warehouse.”
Blanche said Tuesday that the center is “required to – under the laws associated with a nonprofit – to have certain transparency and honesty in what they’re telling donors they’re going to spend money on and what their mission statement is and what they’re raising money doing.”
Prosecutors further allege that some of the money was used by extremists to commit other crimes, but the indictment does not include any specific instances of that occurring.
It does, however, give details about eight unnamed informants whom the center paid through the shell bank accounts. One informant, a member of a neo-Nazi group called the National Alliance, was allegedly paid more than $1 million over 10 years.
A risky case
Legal experts told CNN the case is likely to face a number of major hurdles given that the theory under which it’s premised runs counter to the reality of the SPLC’s stated objectives over the years.
Because the organization has long made public its mission of dismantling extremist groups, it’s “preposterous” for the government to argue that any donor who’s given money to SPLC didn’t know what those funds were being used for and didn’t support their money being used to pay informants, said retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner.
“Everyone understood the way they function and why they function and how that was part of the mission,” Gertner said. “So it is a curious indictment.”
Gertner predicted that should the case get to trial, prosecutors may struggle to find witnesses to testify against the SPLC.
“I think it’s going to fall apart because I think there will be no witnesses to support what they’re saying,” she said, adding that the case could also suffer setbacks before trial if the group can convince the judge overseeing it that the organization is being unfairly prosecuted.
Such requests to dismiss a case based on claims of a selective or vindictive prosecution are rarely granted, but judges have appeared more receptive to them since Trump returned to the White House last year. Gertner said SPLC may point to the administration’s antagonization of the group as evidence that it’s being singled out for criminal punishment.
Abbe Smith, a professor at Georgetown Law who specializes in criminal matters, also said that SPLC may try to get the charges tossed out based on an argument that the case runs up against the group’s First Amendment rights.
“The activities that Southern Poverty Law Center are engaging in are basically speech and association,” she said.
The case, which was brought in Montgomery, Alabama, is being overseen by US District Judge Emily Marks, who was appointed to the bench by Trump. Initial proceedings have not yet been scheduled.
Contentious relationship with Republicans
Some observers have also raised concerns that the case was borne out of the Trump administration’s desire to use the Justice Department to silence its critics.
For years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has faced accusations from Republicans who say it has unfairly maligned conservative organizations and individuals as extremists.
The center has been outwardly critical of the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, voting restrictions, education and other social issues. It has supported several lawsuits against the administration and GOP lawmakers across the country.
Allegations of anti-conservative bias intensified in the wake of Kirk’s death last year, as the SPLC had described Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, in a report as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”
Patel quickly broke ties with the SPLC in October, arguing, without evidence, that its research “has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence.”
“That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership,” Patel said in a post on X.
After the charges were unveiled Tuesday, several prominent civil rights group rushed to SPLC’s defense, saying the case is the latest example of the Justice Department fulfilling Trump’s desire to use its powers to exact revenge on political adversaries.
“This administration’s continued weaponization of the Justice Department to target organizations speaking out against its agenda is anti-American behavior harkening back to the McCarthy era,” said American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero.
NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson, meanwhile, warned that “every organization and individual engaged in social justice should be alarmed.”
But others said the fact that the federal probe into SPLC dated back several years showed that it wasn’t improperly brought by prosecutors.
“Given the complexity of this case and that it appears to be a multi-year investigation, I don’t think we can conclude that this case is on the radar screen of retribution” said Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor in Virginia. “The allegations are very serious.”
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CNN’s Casey Gannon contributed to this report.
