Indictment: The SPLC Funded the Hate It Opposed
For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has acted as a hate group while raising and spending money to ostensibly combat hate. Now comes an indictment for fraud.
“Charlottesville, Virginia” were the first two words out of Joe Biden’s mouth in his 2019 presidential announcement video. In that video, he proceeded to not only repeat the Charlottesville BIG lie about President Donald Trump and “very fine people” but to use that lie as the justification for his presidential bid. Biden asserted, “We are in a battle for the soul of this nation.”
We’ve long known that the Left’s portrayal of Trump’s words was a lie, but now we also know that the Charlottesville rally itself began on a lie, of sorts. The SPLC was funding the very hate it was denouncing.
After a Justice Department investigation, a grand jury issued an 11-count indictment of the SPLC for fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. According to that indictment:
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s (“SPLC”) stated mission included the dismantling of white supremacy and confronting hate across the country. However, unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Alliance. The SPLC’s paid informants (“field sources”) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website. The SPLC also had a field source who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Leftist agitators wanted to dismantle Southern history and paid $270,000 to a phony opponent of that hatred, all so that the SPLC could raise more money and justify its own existence. And it got a woman killed and Joe Biden elected.
It wasn’t just the Charlottesville haters. In total, the Montgomery, Alabama-based SPLC “secretly funneled more than $3 million in funds to white supremacist & extremist groups,” the indictment says.
“The SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 21, 2026
Acting AG Todd Blanche details allegations that the Southern Poverty Law Center was funneling donor money to extremist groups. pic.twitter.com/uGicR3wkWe
It gets more sordid.
The SPLC “was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing — not dismantling extremism, but funding it to carry out this scheme,” Blanche added. “SPLC created bank accounts in the name of at least five completely fictitious organizations that had no bona fide employees or legitimate business purpose.”
“The money was passed from SPLC to one sham account, to a second sham account, and then loaded onto prepaid cards to give to the members of the extremist groups,” Blanche continued. “This was designed to shield the source of those funds, and because of this, SPLC is also charged with one count … of conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
SPLC interim chief Bryan Fair said his organization is “outraged by the false accusations” and will “vigorously defend ourselves.” Yeah, it’s no fun to get caught.
By the way, Fair is the latest in a line of temporary leaders who took over after the SPLC dumped its cofounder, Morris Dees, over allegations of — wait for it — racial discrimination against employees.
The “nonpartisan” SPLC has used its “hate map” to target such mainstream organizations as the Family Research Council, which ultimately led a deranged man to attack the FRC’s headquarters in 2012. Moms for Liberty is another example of a conservative group the SPLC considers to be a “hate group.” So is Gays Against Groomers.
In reality, the SPLC has for decades been a tool of the Left to bludgeon the Right with accusations of racism while actually itself being a purveyor of hate.
Yet the FBI only stopped using the SPLC as a legitimate source for its investigations last October. Not a moment too soon. When FBI Director Kash Patel severed ties, he rightly called it a “partisan smear machine.”
Now, Patel says, “This is an important case brought by President Trump’s administration, and we’re thankful to the president for his leadership and funding of not just the FBI and DOJ, but his commitment to go out there and wipe out fraud, and conspiracy, and waste, and abuse wherever it occurs, including the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
The SPLC may or may not prevail in court, but here’s hoping the indictment and the allegations are at least enough to dry up some of its funding and to utterly disabuse anyone of the antiquated notion that it’s a reputable organization.
