The Southern Poverty Law Center is not a law enforcement agency. It is not an intelligence agency. It is not a traditional journalism institution either, although it’s worth noting that paying sources is an extremely controversial step in traditional journalism.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a 501(c)(3)  nonprofit, meaning all contributions, grants and bequests are tax deductible.

So if you’ve donated to the SPLC since the 1980s, some of your money went to members of the very hate groups and extremist organizations that the SPLC supposedly exists to combat and defeat.

So, why was SPLC paying enormous sums of money to “informants”? From the Department of Justice’s indictment:

Starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of informants who were either associated with violent extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction. These informants were referred to by some individuals within the SPLC as the “field sources” or the “Fs.” Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in SPLC funds to Fs who were associated with various violent extremist groups. F-37 was a member of the online leadershp chat group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC. F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-37 more than $270,000.00. F-9 was affiliated with the neo-Nazi organization, the National Alliance and C. served as an F for the SPLC for more than 20 years. F-9’s activities included fundraising for the National Alliance. Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-9 more than $1,000,000.00. In 2014, F-9 entered the headquarters of a violent extremist group and stole 25 boxes of their documents. F-9 coordinated payment for the copying of the materials with a high-level SPLC employee who had knowledge the documents had been stolen. The original stolen materials were returned to the violent extremist group in a second illegal entry by F-9. Thereafter, the high-level SPLC employee utilized the documents, in part, as the basis for a story published on the SPLC’s Hatewatch website and authored by the employee. Another F, F-39, was........

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