The GOP’s Cynical Crusade Against the Southern Poverty Law Center

The Trump Administration keeps launching attacks on political opponents.

Last month, a grand jury issued several wire and bank fraud charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a leading civil rights nonprofit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama. FBI Director Kash Patel and acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche touted the charges, which have met widespread condemnation for being “cynical.” This week, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall started a separate politically motivated investigation into the organization for “monetizing hate” and is requiring SPLC to provide extensive documentation, including information about donors.

In the 1980s, SPLC litigated against the Ku Klux Klan and won. In recent years, SPLC is probably best-known for its research into what it categorizes as hate groups – the Klan and other white supremacy organizations, as well as a wider list that includes extremist conservatives. The SPLC has, for example, described communications sent by the White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as “open white nationalism.”

One of the methods that SPLC has used in its research on extremist groups is hiring informants. The organization no longer uses this practice. The Trump Administration’s fraud allegations are based on the notion that SPLC defrauded its donors by paying some of those informants. The logic of the government’s argument goes like this: The donors offering the SPLC financial support were not explicitly told that some of their donations would be paid to the participants of neo-Nazi groups, therefore SPLC is committing fraud.

During the press conference announcing the indictment, Blanche said that the SPLC is trying to “profit off klansmen.” Blanche has also said that the SPLC has been “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” So, in short, the Trump Administration is inexplicably alleging that a civil rights organization is a hotbed of racism.

“The Justice Department is attacking a leading adversary of violent hate groups by accusing it of secretly supporting the very groups the organization has opposed for decades,” Christopher Hardee wrote for Lawfare. “Prosecuting a group that the far right opposes by accusing the group of supporting the far right makes this one of the most cynical criminal cases ever brought by the Department of Justice.”

Poking holes in the FBI’s pretext for charging the SPLC is pretty easy. For starters, the FBI has a decades-long, infamous history of infiltrating groups it has deemed a threat. “There are, I would have to imagine, every day those kinds of operations,” Javed Ali, associate professor at University of Michigan and former FBI official, told USA Today. The FBI often pays its informants who participate in groups under investigation. You don’t have to approve of the FBI’s long history of using undercovers to spy on Americans to understand that its leadership can’t possibly take issue with paid informants gathering information, because they have benefited from similar practices.

Perhaps most importantly: The Trump Administration has launched this attack against SPLC while attacking Americans’ civil rights and liberties in so many ways that it’s not possible to provide a comprehensive summary here. One lowlight: Last summer, Trump told Texas lawmakers to gerrymander to deliver Republicans more Congressional seats – which they did by cutting Black and Latino representatives out of their districts. Just last week, the Court effectively decided that Black Americans aren’t entitled to political representation. And the same conservative majority ruled that law enforcement can legally racially profile people when deciding who to arrest and detain. President Trump celebrated all of this.

Then there’s the violent crusade against immigrants, supported by white nationalist groups. Trump’s top staffer Stephen Miller designed the policy that separated thousands of children from their parents during his first term, and he’s also collaborated with anti-immigrant hate groups. According to Common Cause, “Miller elevated their ideas into national policy, blurring the line between governance and extremist ideology, resulting in sweeping deportations and a normalization of xenophobia at the highest levels of government.”

It all fits a pattern. JD Vance has promoted vile lies about immigrants, and Trump has said that immigrants “poison the blood of America.” It’s also worth noting that donors with extreme white nationalist views, like Elon Musk, donated hundreds of millions of dollars to get Trump and other Republicans into office.

This indictment also fits the pattern of the Trump Administration launching investigations into its opponents. Last spring, President Trump signed an executive memorandum instructing then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate ActBlue, a fundraising platform for Democrats. The Trump Administration has also repeatedly tried to prosecute New York Attorney General Leticia James and former FBI Director James Comey, both vocal critics of President Trump.

This month, the FBI raided the offices of Virginia State Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, who co-led efforts to pass the state’s redistricting referendum that was Democrats’ response to Republicans’ gerrymander of Texas and other states. The raid came just two weeks after Virginia voters passed the referendum Lucas championed.

For the SPLC, these charges already have had real-world consequences. Multiple major financial institutions have removed the organization from their donor advised funds, which are sources of larger scale donations for many nonprofits. That’s a chilling prospect. This is a continuation of the Trump Administration’s barely veiled attacks on civil rights advocates, progressive groups, and anyone else it considers a political opponent.

Thousands of nonprofit organizations, the big and the small, rely on the ability to fundraise to do everything from stocking food pantries to filing lawsuits against Trump’s illegal executive orders, and they’re vulnerable to changes in their non-profit status. Given how these charges have already hit SPLC’s funding, Trump’s DOJ has already scored a victory, even without winning a verdict.

In some ways, this all feels very out of our immediate control. No one I know has the power to stop Trump’s DOJ from prosecuting civil rights advocates and creating a chilling effect that siphons off their funding. But the weaponization of the DOJ against one of the country’s preeminent civil rights nonprofits should stand as a reminder that it is absolutely critical that we each do everything we can to ensure that Democrats flip Congress in November. If that happens, Democratic lawmakers can use their subpoena power to start their own investigations – this time into real acts of corruption.