DOJ says Southern Poverty Law Center funneled $3M+ to white supremacist and extremist groups like the KKK

By Fox News · Fox News

FBI Director Kash Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a sweeping indictment Tuesday against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), accusing the far-left nonprofit of fraudulently paying members of extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. A grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama returned an 11-count indictment charging the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to the Justice Department (DOJ). Between 2014 and 2023, according to the DOJ, the SPLC "secretly funneled" more than $3 million in donations to at least eight individuals associated with violent extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, the Nationalist Socialist Movement, Unite the Right, Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, and more. Meanwhile, the SPLC paid members of these extremist groups so it could create a "work product that reported on these activities," according to Blanche. "To that end, [SPLC] was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing – not dismantling extremism but funding it," Blanche argued Tuesday during the press conference announcing the indictment. LEFT-WING GROUP CHASES PROOF OF KASH PATEL'S ALLEGED ‘EXCESSIVE DRINKING’ AS DEMS EYE FBI DIRECTOR'S OUSTER The SPLC is a longstanding left-wing nonprofit that claims to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement about them with the goal of dismantling the groups. SPLC's CEO, Bryan Fair, addressed the probe in a video message posted online, arguing the Trump administration has "made no secret who they want to protect and who they want to destroy." "We are reviewing the charges," a subsequent statement from Fair sent to Fox News Digital added. "However, after today’s Department of Justice press conference, we are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC – an organizat…