Why Trump’s Justice targets the SPLC

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center is under fire, and not for the first time.

This time it’s not civilian critics or the media, it is the Department of Justice, alleging that the “civil rights group” has been supporting “hate groups” with money donated by its supporters.

If true, it would be like PETA supporting barbecue cookouts..

Notice I said “if true.” 

I read through the 14-page indictment to figure out what was going on.

Not the “why.” The “why” is obvious — SPLC is the antagonist to President Donald J. Trump and his supporters. 

Is the prosecution political? Perhaps.

Were the prosecutions of Trump political? Perhaps.

But even prosecutions motivated by politics may uncover criminal wrongdoing.

Do I have full faith in this Department of Justice?

No.

But just the other day it dropped its investigation into the Federal Reserve and its Chairman Jerome Powell on charges of fraud and corruption cooked up by Trump. 

So there is hope for fair treatment.

“Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do,” interim SPLC CEO and president Bryan Fair said in a statement. “The actions by the DOJ will not shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the Civil Rights Movement becomes a reality for all.”

Before I deal with the indictment, let me do a little back story on SPLC.

In its hey day, SPLC targeted actual hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan. It not only exposed their often criminal activity, it took the unusual approach of suing the KKK, and bankrupting it. 

That’s when I was proud to be a member of SPLC. I donated money. Who doesn’t want to be in the fight against the haters and the bigots, the bomb-throwers and church burners.

However, SPLC changed.

It turned hard Left and began playing fast and loose with the facts.

I questioned its reporting of “immigrants” being “attacked” and “rounded up.”

Journalist to journalist I contacted them. The people being “rounded up” were people here illegally. They were “illegal immigrants.”

The person I spoke to agreed, and said it was a mistake.

Then it happened again. I complained again.

Then it happened again, and they stopped returning my calls. 

They smeared Fox News anchor Lou Dobbs, who is married to an immigrant, as an “immigrant basher,” because he opposed illegal immigrants.

That’s when I stopped giving it money.

Having turned Left, it basically hung the “hate” label on any group on the Right it did not like.

In 2023, I came to the defense of Moms for Liberty, a conservative group with which I had no attachment. 

SPLC listed it as an “anti-government extremist group,” rolling it into a long list of other “hate groups.”

However, the FBI didn’t share that view of Moms for Liberty, and neither did any other law enforcement group I could find.

For too long most media outlets, without question, picked up the diatribes published by SPLC in its various publicity organs.

SPLC was living off its reputation, being awarded an authority it did not deserve.

I was not the only one to question SPLC’s actions.

In 2019, the Washington Post committed a sort of liberal heresy when it dared to question if SPLC was a fair judge of “hate” in America.

The progressive Post  reported, “For decades, the hate list was a golden seal of disapproval, considered nonpartisan enough to be heeded by government agencies, police departments, corporations and journalists. But in recent years . . . the list has swept up an increasing number of conservative activists — mostly in the anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim categories.”

I side with none of those anti’s, but those are political opinions, and they are protected by the First Amendment.

—-

I mentioned  SPLC had successfully sued the KKK.

Truly embarrassing to SPLC had to be the $3.4 million it was ordered by the courts to pay Maajid Naeaz for listing him and his Quilliam think tank as Muslim extremists when in fact they worked to counter Muslim extremism.

Later in 2019, it was reported that SPLC, which always crowed about its defense of the rights of the oppressed, was fighting attempts by its own workers to organize and form a union.

Can you say “hypocrisy”?

While the word “poverty” is in its title, the organization has a nest egg of around $800 million. 

Finally, in this history segment, after founder Morris Dees was pushed out in 2019, he and  SPLC were torn apart in an expose published by progressive The New Yorker magazine. 

That brings us to the present. 

While the Department of Justice fired a scattergun of charges against SPLC, the most significant and serious was spending millions  to support the hate groups it was pledged to eradicate, much of the money sent to members or officers of the targeted hate groups.

“Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC funneled more than $3 million in SPLC funds to Fs [field sources] who were associated with various violent extremist groups,” according to the DOJ indictment.

All were identified by code numbers rather than names.

According to the indictment:

F-37 was a leader of the group that organized the “Unite the Right” Charlottesville event, helped coordinate transportation, and made racist postings. F-37 was paid more than $270,000.

F-9 was affiliated with the neo-Nazi organization, the National Alliance, for which the operative raised funds. F-9 also stole 25 boxes of documents from a violent extremist group and was paid more than $1 million. 

Another operative, F-39, was paid $6,000 to accept blame for the theft.

F-27 was reportedly an officer in the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. He received more than $300,000.

F-42, while featured on SPLC’s “extremist file” web page, was paid more than $140,000. 

F-30 led the National Socialist Party of America, was a former Aryan Nation and KKK member, received more than $70,000 while also on the “extremist file” web page.

F-43 was a convicted federal felon and reported president of the American Front. He collected more than $19,000.

F-unknown was a KKK member and married to an Exalted Cyclops of the Klan. They were paid a paltry $3,500.

DOJ also alleges in addition to paying leaders, it used Fs to funnel money to other extremist groups.

To handle the transactions, SPLC reportedly protected itself by creating five fictitious firms to disperse the funds.

The nut of the DOJ case is that SPLC “intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud donors” and obtained the money through "materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, promises, and omissions.”

That’s it? That’s the whole case?

“Donors were not told that some of the donated funds were to be used by the SPLC to pay high-level leaders of violent extremist groups,” in what the DOJ calls a conspiracy.

Them’s the facts. Now the analysis.

Do the U.S., state, and local governments use paid informants?

Yes.

Maybe it’s not something we like, maybe it’s something we hold at arm’s length, but the use of informants is a cornerstone of American policing, particularly in cases involving narcotics, organized crime, and domestic terrorism. The practice is governed by a set of  guidelines.

Forbes reported the FBI paid approximately $294 million (2012-2018), the Drug Enforcement Administration paid at least $237 million (2011-2015), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives paid approximately $17.2 million (2012-2015) to informants.

But SPLC is not a law-enforcement body, you say. True enough, but it is free to infiltrate groups it suspects of bad actions. And there is no law prohibiting the kind of undercover work it engaged in.

The DOJ does not make that case. It is going after SPLC, basically, for fraud.

Now, SPLC has spent a boatload of money on the scum of the earth, but it is its own money.

In the indictment I did not see a complaint about being defrauded from anyone who gave the SPLC donations. So who is the victim?

Really, there is no victim, except maybe the hate groups that were infiltrated.

So this DOJ prosecution seems as empty-headed as the one it announced Tuesday against former FBI Director James Comey, alleging his sea shell message was an assassination attempt. Ass defines these DOJ distractions.