The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama-based nonprofit long known for tracking and litigating against hate groups, was indicted Wednesday on 11 federal counts including wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering, the Department of Justice announced.
Federal prosecutors allege that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donor funds to members of extremist organizations, including the Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Party of America, and the United Klans of America. The DOJ claims the payments were disguised using "fictitious entities" designed to conceal where the money was going.
The SPLC has pushed back on the characterization. The organization says it paid these individuals as confidential informants to gather intelligence on extremist activities, a practice it argues is consistent with its mission to monitor and expose hate groups.
Legal analyst Jonathan Turley, appearing on Fox News Wednesday, described the case as deeply ironic given the SPLC's history of pursuing asset forfeiture against groups like the Ku Klux Klan. "The irony is also that it was the Center that sought to seize assets from groups like the KKK. Now the U.S. government is trying to, through forfeiture, seize the assets of the Center," Turley said. He called it "very rare" to see a non-law enforcement organization running covert informant operations of this kind, and said the SPLC had drifted into being a "more blatantly political organization" in recent years.
The indictment has drawn attention to past criticism of the SPLC from prominent conservative figures. Posts from Elon Musk and the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, both of whom had been publicly criticized by the SPLC, circulated widely Wednesday. Musk wrote on X last October that the SPLC "spreads hate propaganda relentlessly" and "needs to be shut down." Kirk, who died last year, had called the SPLC a "hate group" and said being listed on its registry of extremist organizations was "a badge of honor."
The SPLC had labeled Turning Point USA a hate group and separately accused Musk of making a Nazi salute at a Trump inaugural event, a claim Musk denied.
The organization now faces potential asset forfeiture as part of the federal prosecution. No trial date has been announced.
