Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a press conference with FBI Director Kash Patel next to him, at the Department of Justice in Washington, April 21, 2026.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced 11 counts of fraud against the Southern Poverty Law Center for secretly funding leaders and organizers of white supremacist, racist and other hate groups the civil rights organization says it fights.
“SPLC’s paid informants (‘wild sources’) participated in promoting racist groups while the SPLC criticized the same groups on its website,” said the indictment returned by a grand jury in US District Court in Montgomery, Alabama, on Tuesday.
The SPLC, a non-profit human rights group, faces six counts of fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of money laundering.
Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, some of whom were associated with the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America, the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club affiliated with the Aryan Nations and the American Front, said acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche at a press conference.
“The SPLC was not eliminating gangs,” Blanche said, as FBI Director Kash Patel stood by her side. “Instead it was creating fanaticism that aims to argue that sources have been paid to incite racial hatred.”
“In one troubling example, the SPLC paid a member of the lead group that organized the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in one death and dozens of injuries,” the acting attorney general said, noting that the lawsuit alleges the group paid the individual approximately $270,000 over eight years.
The SPLC said earlier Tuesday that it was the subject of a criminal investigation by the DOJ, and that the investigation looked into the group’s use of paid, undercover informants “to gather credible intelligence on highly violent groups.”
The group’s interim leader, Bryan Fair, in a statement in response to Blanche’s press conference, said, “We are outraged by the false allegations against the SPLC – an organization that has stood for 55 years as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to build a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive.”
“Taking on violent hate groups and extremist groups is among the most dangerous jobs out there, and we believe it’s also among the most important jobs we do. To be clear, this program has saved lives,” Fair said.
“The SPLC will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff and our mission; we will continue to fight against hate; and we will continue to envision and create a safe and just world,” he said.
FBI Director Patel said in October that the FBI would cut ties with the SPLC, calling it a “public polluting machine.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that one group named in the lawsuit is the American Front. A previous version misspelled the group name.
