![\"Acting](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2026-us-department-justice-announced-126122436.jpg\")
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a press conference with FBI Director Kash Patel. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\nWASHINGTON \u2014 The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that a grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center for making fraudulent payments of millions of dollars to members of the Ku Klux Klan and other neo-Nazi organizations.<\/p>\n
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference that the 11-count indictment filed in an Alabama federal court alleged the left-wing nonprofit had in the past decade paid at least $3 million to eight members of the far-right groups.<\/p>\n
One leader of the 2017 Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Va., received roughly $270,000 over an eight-year period. Neither that person nor others were identified in the 14-page indictment.<\/p>\n
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a press conference with FBI Director Kash Patel. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Another embedded in a neo-Nazi organization was paid $1 million to steal 25 boxes of the hate group\u2019s documents<\/p>\n
Others had affiliations with the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Aryan Nations, the Nationalist Socialist Party of American Nazis and the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club.<\/p>\n
Earlier Tuesday, SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement that his group was being targeted for \u201cprior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began using informants who had infiltrated various groups.<\/p>\n
But Blanche said in the press conference that the nonprofit never informed law enforcement that it was \u201cpaying off the Klu Klux Klan\u201d or other extremist groups.<\/p>\n
Several of the informants were also being paid while simultaneously being featured in SPLC publications \u2014 including on its public-facing\u00a0\u201cExtremist File\u201d webpage \u2014 as members of the hate groups.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors alleged in the indictment that the informants, or \u201cfield sources,\u201d were also \u201cengaged in the active promotion of racist groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The unidentified field source for the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, for example, allegedly \u201chelped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d Blanche told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing political about this indictment or this investigation,\u201d Blanche added, claiming that investigation preceded the Trump administration and Biden\u2019s DOJ had made a decision \u201cto not pursue\u201d it.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2020-montgomery-alabama-united-states-126122808.jpg\")
The US Department of Justice announced that the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that is known for tracking the activities of hate groups, is under investigation for secretly funneling funds to white supremacist groups. In Pictures via Getty Images<\/p>\n
FBI Director Kash Patel added that the \u201cwidespread, decade-long multi-million dollar fraud\u201d \u2014 which stretched from 2014 to 2023 \u2014 was concealed through a \u201cbanking network,\u201d \u201cshell companies,\u201d and other fictitious entities.<\/p>\n
The SPLC then\u00a0\u201cfraudulently raised money by lying to their donor network, thousands of Americans, to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups,\u201d Patel noted.<\/p>\n
The sham entities included a \u201cCenter Investigative Agency,\u201d or CIA, \u201cFox\u00a0Photography,\u201d \u201cNorth West Technologies,\u201d \u201cTech Writers Group\u201d and \u201cRare Books Warehouse,\u201d which \u201cconducted no actual business,\u201d the indictment stated.<\/p>\n
The indictment, filed in US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama\u2019s Northern Division, alleged four counts for making \u201cfalse\u00a0or misleading statements\u201d about the entities to a federally insured bank on Dec. 10, 2016.<\/p>\n
It also alleged six counts of wire fraud related to a series of payments totalling $13,905 on April 25, 2023.<\/p>\n
The 11th count was for conspiracy to commit money laundering.<\/p>\n
Donors were never \u201ctold that some of the donated funds were used for the benefit of\u00a0the violent extremist groups or that some of the donated funds would be used in the commission\u00a0of state and federal crimes,\u201d the indictment noted.<\/p>\n
The charges could result in forfeiture of the \u201cgross receipts obtained, directly or indirectly, from the\u00a0offenses\u201d upon conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that a grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[383,15914,9,11,10,87,52861,58,81505],"class_list":{"0":"post-205551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-department-of-justice","9":"tag-kash-patel","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-todd-blanche","15":"tag-us-news","16":"tag-white-supremacists"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}