Southern Poverty Law Center

DOJ Indicts Southern Poverty Law Center for Secretly Funding Extremists

"The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence," said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Robby Soave | 4.22.2026 2:40 PM

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SPLC (Gripas Yuri/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is alleging the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a well-known civil rights organization that purports to monitor right-wing hate groups, secretly funneled millions of dollars to white nationalists and extremists who worked for those same groups. The SPLC says the purpose of the payments was to compensate informants who were working to dismantle hate groups from the inside, but according to the feds, such a scheme amounts to fraud and money laundering.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges at a press conference on Tuesday, noting that a grand jury had already returned the indictment.

"The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence," said Blanche.

That specific accusation is well-substantiated, even without considering these latest revelations about the SPLC's role in funding the very groups it purports to monitor, track, and work to subvert. Whether it actually violates the law is another matter, though the creative means the SPLC employed to disguise its substantial payments to white nationalist activists seem dubious.

How substantial? According to the indictment, the SPLC paid $3 million to various figures who worked for extremist groups that were under the SPLC's watchful eye between 2014 and 2023. Several of these paid informants are described as significant persons within the white nationalist movement: one was an imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and another was a........

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