Justice
Dept. Charges Prominent Civil Rights Group With Financial Crimes
Republicans
have accused the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is best known for
investigating hate groups, of unfairly targeting conservative and Christian
organizations.
Devlin
Barrett
By Devlin
Barrett
Reporting
from Washington
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/us/politics/southern-poverty-law-center-doj-investigation.html
April 21,
2026
The
Justice Department charged the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights
group that has long tracked hate groups, on Tuesday with financial crimes,
accusing it of defrauding donors by using their money to secretly pay
informants inside extremist organizations.
At a news
conference announcing the charges, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general,
said that from 2014 to 2023, the group made payments totaling more than $3
million to people who were affiliated with extremist organizations like the Ku
Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America. The law center, he
added, was “doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing —
not dismantling extremism, but funding it.”
The
indictment, however, offers little to support the notion that the group’s
payments to informants was meant to aid the extremist groups they had
infiltrated.
Prosecutors
describe how one informant, which the law center refers to as a field source,
“was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite
the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event at the
direction of the S.P.L.C.”
That
rally included torch-wielding marchers chanting antisemitic slogans, and
violent clashes that culminated with one participant ramming his car into a
group of counterprotesters, killing a woman and leaving at least 19 others
injured.
The
informant “made racist postings under the supervision of the S.P.L.C. and
helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees,” the
charging document said. Between 2015 and 2023, the informant received more than
$270,000 from the group, the indictment said.
Another
informant affiliated with a neo-Nazi group was paid more than $1 million over a
period of about nine years, according to the indictment, and in 2014 that
informant stole 25 boxes of documents from an unidentified violent extremist
group. The Southern Poverty Law Center later used those documents to create a
report about the group.
The
center faces charges of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and conspiracy
to commit money laundering. No individuals were charged in the indictment,
though Mr. Blanche said the investigation was continuing. He accused the group
of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”
The
Southern Poverty Law Center was formed in 1971 in Alabama and is best known for
investigating groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy
organizations. In recent years, Republicans have accused the group of unfairly
targeting conservative and Christian organizations, labeling them as
extremists.
The
criminal charges come as the Trump administration makes a broader push to
counter what it calls anti-Christian and anti-conservative bias in the
government. Last week, the Justice Department issued a report highly critical
of how the Biden administration prosecuted anti-abortion activists under a law
meant to safeguard access to abortion providers and church services.
Bryan
Fair, the group's interim chief executive, expressed outrage over what he
called the “false allegations.” The indictment, he said, “will not shake our
resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the civil rights
movement becomes a reality for all.”
In a
video statement issued before the charges were filed, Mr. Fair argued that the
Southern Poverty Law Center was being targeted for political reasons, saying
the Trump administration had “made no secret of who they want to protect and
who they want to destroy.”
Mr.
Blanche denied the case was rooted in partisanship, saying, “There is nothing
political about this indictment.”
In his
video statement, Mr. Fair said that the group no longer worked with paid
informants but added that those informants had “risked their lives to
infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation’s most radical and
violent extremist groups.” That work, he insisted, saved lives.
The
center had for many years provided information and tips to local law
enforcement and the F.B.I.
Conservative
criticism of the Southern Poverty Law Center intensified after the
assassination of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in September at a public
speaking event in Utah. A 2024 report from the center included a description of
Mr. Kirk’s group, Turning Point USA, which called the group a “case study of
the hard right.”
In
October, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, announced that the bureau was
severing its ties with the group. He said the organization “long ago abandoned
civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.” He singled out
their use of a “hate map” displaying what it described as anti-government and
hate groups, saying the map unfairly targeted “mainstream Americans.” Around
the same time, Mr. Patel also cut his agency’s ties with the Anti-Defamation
League, a group that fights antisemitism.
Mr.
Blanche said the Southern Poverty Law Center did not tell the F.B.I. about its
use of informants, or the use of shell companies to disguise that the
informants were receiving payments from the group.
At the
news conference, Mr. Patel answered questions about a defamation suit he filed
on Monday against The Atlantic over a recent article that claimed his job was
in jeopardy over what it described as excessive drinking.
“I have
never been intoxicated on the job,” Mr. Patel said. Mr. Blanche also came to
his defense, disputing that he had fielded concerns about Mr. Patel’s alleged
drinking, as the article stated. The Atlantic has said it stands by its
reporting.
Devlin
Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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