Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier launched an investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center Monday, piggybacking off federal charges filed against the organization. <\/p>\n
The Justice Department announced bank fraud charges<\/a> against the organization on April 21 over alleged money the nonprofit paid to confidential informants inside organizations it was investigating and imposing, including the Ku Klux Klan. <\/p>\n Uthmeier\u2019s investigation circles the same issue, demanding<\/a> communications with donors about the law center\u2019s practices of using informants, documentation of the amount of donations from Florida residents, a list of legal entities the organization uses for fundraising, and payments the organization made to informants.<\/p>\n \u201cThe SPLC raises millions in charitable donations every year, while allegedly paying members and leaders within the very groups it purports to fight,\u201d Uthmeier said in a statement. \u201cSPLC appears to be running a deceptive organization that pays informants to manufacture racism on its behalf. If these allegations are true, there will be consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n The Southern Poverty Law Center didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment. The organization has denied the charges, and claims that the Justice Department misled the public by saying the group doesn\u2019t share information<\/a> with law enforcement. <\/p>\n The subpoena appears to be drafted to avoid a thorny issued tackled by the US Supreme Court on April 29 when the unanimous high court ruled<\/a> a New Jersey crisis pregnancy center could sue in federal court to block a state subpoena into its donor information. That case is now proceeding simultaneously<\/a> in federal and state court. <\/p>\n \u201cThis Subpoena does not seek to obtain the personally identifying information of any private entity or person whose relationship to SPLC is solely as a confidential or anonymous donor or member and whose identity as a donor or member has not been made public,\u201d the Florida subpoena said. \u201cSPLC may redact such personally identifying information in its response to this Subpoena.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier launched an investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center Monday, piggybacking off federal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[104202,28,30,29,111953,12167],"class_list":["post-258263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-bank-fraud","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-informers","tag-subpoenas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}