By Zachary Stieber
Contributing Writer
The Southern Poverty Law Center paid people who wanted to leave extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to stay in them, according to newly filed court documents.
Two individuals informed the SPLC in 2010 that they feared for their safety from other Klan members and wanted to leave the white nationalist movement, after seeing media reports about the SPLC paying to help a person leave an extremist group.
An SPLC employee invited the people to Montgomery, Alabama, and encouraged them to stay in the klan, according to a superseding indictment filed on Tuesday. The employee allegedly offered the people $1,200 per month and to cover expenses if they stayed. They agreed.
Another klan member, who also led the National Socialist Party of America and a faction of the Aryan Nations, reached out to the SPLC to discuss leaving the white nationalist movement, the grand jury said. The SPLC offered the man, referred to in court papers as F-30, a monthly salary of $2,500, and to cover expenses, “to lead and maintain the violent extremist organization F-30 told the SPLC employee he wanted to leave,” the indictment states.
The man agreed to stay in the movement, and allegedly used money from the SPLC to travel to extremist rallies, financially support other extremist organizations, and recruit new members.
The SPLC paid those people and others described by SPLC employees as field sources through fictitious entities with names such as the Center Investigative Agency and Rare Books Warehouse, prosecutors say.
In total, from 2010 through 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled $4.1 million in tax-exempt funds from donors to the fictitious accounts, according to the superseding indictment. At the same time, the organization was promoting itself as “confront[ing] hate” and monitoring and exposing extremist groups.
The organization faces charges such as making false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiring to conceal money laundering.
The original indictment, which contained fewer charges and details, was released in April.
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement at the time. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”
Lawyers representing the SPLC said in a May motion to dismiss the indictment for vindictive prosecution that the organization “faces criminal charges for exercising its First Amendment right to identify, report on, and criticize extremist hate groups.”
Abbe Lowell, one of the attorneys, said in a Wednesday filing that federal officials wrongly released an unsigned and unofficial draft of the superseding indictment while it was still sealed and requested a hearing on the matter.
Neither the government nor the judge overseeing the case has responded to the filing. The next hearing in the case is slated to take place on June 16.
