Southern Poverty Law Center Head Pleads Not Guilty to Federal Fraud Charges

The head of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) pleaded not guilty on behalf of the group on May 7 in an Alabama courtroom to federal fraud charges accusing the group of defrauding donors and secretly paying millions of dollars to informants in various extremist groups.

Bryan Fair, SPLC’s interim president and CEO, appeared at a federal court in Montgomery, representing the group.

Last month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a grand jury had returned an 11-count indictment against the SLPC, alleging that it funneled more than $3 million to leaders and organizers associated with white supremacist and other extremist groups.

The indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, accused the nonprofit organization of sending donations into bank accounts with fake names, which were then allegedly used to transfer money into the pockets of individuals in various extremist groups.

Charges against the far-left advocacy group include wire fraud, making false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The SPLC has called the charges and investigation politically motivated.

“The federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation’s most vulnerable people, and any organization—like ours—that tries to stand in the breach,” Fair previously said.

The group did not respond to a request via its online portal for comment about the arraignment hearing on May 7. SPLC’s legal team also did not respond to a request for comment via email from The Epoch Times.

In Montgomery, Alabama, where the SLPC is headquartered, the grand jury returned an indictment on April 21 covering the years 2014 to 2023.

During that time, according to the indictment, the group paid at least eight informants affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, the National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the National Socialist Party of America, and the American Front.

The DOJ said one of those paid informants was a member of the group that planned the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which resulted in one death.

Another individual, to whom the SPLC allegedly paid more than $70,000 from 2014 to 2016, was the leader of the National Socialist Party of America, a neo-Nazi group established in 1974 by the remnants of the American Nazi Party.

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

“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.”

Blanche further alleged that the group was using paid operatives within violent, extremist groups “to incite and intensify racial tensions.”

Fair said the investigation against his group was “the most serious” of recent acts against it.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid, confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” Fair said.

“This use of informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence.”

Fair noted that the group no longer works with paid informants but has frequently shared information obtained from those individuals with law enforcement. The interim president said that the SPLC began working with informants during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and that they risked their lives over the years to infiltrate radical groups.

“There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives,” Fair said.

Two days after the DOJ announced the grand jury’s indictment, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) requested that the SPLC turn over documents regarding its relationship with the former Biden administration’s DOJ and FBI.

In a letter to Fair, Jordan wrote that “publicly available documents revealed how the Justice Department partnered closely with the SPLC during the Biden–Harris Administration, including scheduling regular meetings, giving the SPLC early access to federal law-enforcement data, and allowing SPLC employees to train federal prosecutors.”

Jordan told Fair in the letter that the House Judiciary Committee was investigating whether the SPLC influenced federal policy during the Biden–Harris era.

Fair said his group was “outraged by the false accusations.”

The Ohio lawmaker gave the group until April 30 to comply with his request for documents dating back to Jan. 1, 2017, but it remains unclear whether any documents, if they exist, were turned over.

Since the DOJ announced the grand jury’s indictment, it has sparked political backlash and concerns about the SPLC’s influence on media outlets, which have used the group’s “Hate Map” as a credible source to track extremist groups.