‘Not a valid indictment’: Bogus charges against SPLC mark Trump’s latest attack on progressives

For months, President Donald Trump and his allies have vowed to destroy progressive nonprofits, falsely claiming that they fund and support political violence and terrorism in the U.S.

But this week, Trump loyalists in the Department of Justice (DOJ) took a major step towards carrying out the president’s promised campaign of repression: They pressed fraud charges against the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the storied civil rights organization that for decades has monitored and exposed white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other extremists.

In a press conference Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced that a grand jury in Alabama returned an 11-count indictment against the SPLC for alleged financial crimes over its past use of paid informants to infiltrate violent extremist groups. The charges include wire fraud, making fraudulent statements and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Former federal prosecutors have called the indictment fundamentally flawed. 

“It’s not a valid indictment,” Kyle Boynton, a former civil rights prosecutor and FBI agent, told CBS News. “I don’t think any prosecutor with white-collar experience would look at this indictment and believe it makes out the elements of a crime.”

Straying from the facts presented in the indictment, Blanche and Patel accused the SPLC of “manufacturing” extremism and fueling racial “hatred” in the U.S. — extraordinary claims against an organization known for devising innovative legal ways to cripple hate groups, including factions of the Ku Klux Klan.

Even Trump joined the pile-on, bizarrely attempting to link the charges to his false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to President Joe Biden. 

The SPLC is “another Democrat Hoax, along with Act Blue, and many others,” Trump said in a social media post. “If it is true, the 2020 Presidential Election should be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect!”

The SPLC has rejected the DOJ’s allegations and vowed to fight the charges. But the DOJ’s case against the center has alarmed other civil rights groups, who warn that it may mark the opening salvo of Trump’s broader assault on civil society.

It’s not difficult to see why. As right-wing politics in the U.S. have grown more radical over the past two decades, the SPLC has increasingly focused on more ‘mainstream’ political activists, drawing criticism from the right.

The SPLC was among the progressive organizations that found themselves in the Trump administration’s crosshairs after the killing of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk. 

Despite denouncing Kirk’s assassination, the SPLC drew particular ire for a 2025 report describing his group, Turning Point USA, as a “case study of the hard right” for its role in promoting Christian nationalism.

In the days after Kirk’s killing, GOP lawmakers called for left-wing groups to be investigated. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller falsely accused progressive organizations of being responsible for Kirk’s killing and vowed that the Trump administration would take action against, and potentially destroy, them. 

And Vice President JD Vance hinted that the organizations’ tax-exempt statuses could be at risk.

What the indictment alleges

Broadly, the indictment claims that the SPLC defrauded its donors by paying around $3 million for information from people associated with extremist groups between 2014 and 2023 — roughly $333,000 annually — as part of its intelligence gathering operations.

But the DOJ specifically alleges that six alleged money transfers totaling $13,905 from an Alabama-based bank account to informants’ accounts in April 2023 constituted wire fraud because donors were not informed of those individual transactions.

The document also asserts that the SPLC made four false statements to a bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation while creating shell companies to disguise the fact that informants were receiving payments from the center. The DOJ claims that SPLC employees told a bank that they were the sole proprietors of accounts for the fake companies. 

However, after the bank conducted a review of the accounts, the center acknowledged that those accounts were opened for the SPLC’s benefit and closed them. To prove the bank fraud charges, prosecutors will have to show that the SPLC and its employees voluntarily, intentionally and deliberately made false statements.

Notably, the indictment was only against the SPLC itself. None of its employees or leadership were named. However, at a press conference Tuesday, Blanche — who is currently jockeying to lead the DOJ permanently — said the department’s investigation was ongoing and that it may seek additional charges.

Though the document repeatedly claims that the SPLC never disclosed payments to donors, the center actively fundraises on its stated mission of investigating and exposing white supremacist and extremist groups. It has also regularly provided information about hate groups to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

“The only fraud here seems to be on the part of the U.S. on the grand jury and public,” former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said on social media.

The SPLC’s response

In a video statement Wednesday, SPLC interim President and CEO Bryan Fair described the DOJ’s case as “unsurprising” and vowed to “vigorously defend ourselves, our staff and our work.”

“For 55 years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has stood as a beacon of hope, fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive,” Fair said. “We are therefore unsurprised to be the latest organization targeted by this administration. They have made no secret of who they want to protect and who they want to destroy.”

Fair also defended the center’s use of paid informants as necessary to protect the safety of its staff and the public, adding that the information the center obtained from informants “saved lives.” 

“We frequently shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI,” he said. “We did not, however, share our use of informants broadly with anyone to protect the identity and safety of the informants and their families.”

Though the center no longer works with paid informants, Fair said it continues to “take their safety seriously.”

“These people risked their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation’s most radical and violent extremist groups,” he added.

For its defense, the center has hired prominent defense lawyer Abbe Lowell, who, through his firm Lowell & Associates, has represented several people and organizations targeted by the Trump administration. 

The indictment came after Patel announced in October that the FBI would no longer work with the SPLC, calling it a “partisan smear machine.”

What the indictment does not allege

In the press conference, Blanche made allegations against the SPLC that were not supported by evidence in the indictment.

Blanche claimed that the nonprofit was “manufacturing racism to justify its existence” and “paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” Nothing in the charging document suggests any of that.

In fact, the document indicates the opposite. In one instance, it alleges that one of the SPLC’s informants “stole 25 boxes of documents” from the “headquarters of a violent extremist group” and made copies that were ultimately used in the center’s research. The SPLC paid the informant over $1 million from 2014 to 2023, the document claims.

The closest the indictment comes to supporting Blanche’s allegations is its claim that another one of the SPLC’s informants attended the 2017 “Unite the Right” hate rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the center’s direction and “made racist postings” while under its “supervision.” But the indictment does not define what the alleged supervision entailed, nor does it claim that the center directed the informant to make those posts.

Asked during the press conference whether the DOJ had any evidence that the payments to informants materially supported the hate groups’ operations, Blanche clarified that the indictment did not support his claim that the SPLC was actively funding and supporting extremism. 

“I want to be careful to keep any comments that we make inside the indictment, so what the indictment lays out is payments to individuals who had leadership positions within these organizations. That’s what the grand jury found,” Blanche replied.

“To the extent that those individuals receiving — one received over $1 million over several years — to the extent that there’s any link between that individual receiving money and benefits to that organization, that’s not in the indictment,” he added.

Like Blanche, Patel has also made allegations against the SPLC that are not supported by the indictment. 

“The charity that supposedly fought the Klan funded the Klan. The charity that supposedly fought neo-Nazis funded neo-Nazis,” the FBI director claimed in a Fox News interview, adding that the payments were made “specifically for the reason to sow discord and hate into our society.”

“This is the ultimate definition of hypocrisy,” Patel said. 

Unsurprisingly, conservative media and far-right influencers have also misconstrued the indictment in similar ways. 

Both in a broadcast segment and an online story, Fox News falsely reported that the document accused the SPLC of making payments directly to hate groups.

Billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk, who has boosted far-right political movements across the world and regularly promotes white supremacist content on social media, also asserted that the SPLC “funded a large number of false flag ‘right wing’ organizations and events.”

“Total scam,” Musk added.

Other MAGA figures falsely claimed that the “Unite the Right” rally was a false flag operation because the SPLC paid an informant associated with the event. 

In reality, dozens of people have faced criminal charges, federal indictment or civil liability in connection with the rally. They include James Alex Fields, who was sentenced to life in prison for driving his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one woman and injuring dozens.

‘It is about intimidation’

In statements this week, other civil rights organizations have warned that the DOJ’s case against the SPLC is an attempt to silence civil society organizations and the result of the unprecedented weaponization of the DOJ during Trump’s second term.

“Every organization and individual engaged in social justice should be alarmed,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said. “What we are seeing in real time is an administration seeking to leverage its position to target individuals and organizations that do not agree with its political thought.”

“The more I read about DOJ’s SPLC indictment, the more abusive it appears,” Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said. “It reflects an unprecedented weaponization of that agency’s grave prosecutorial power.”

Marc Morial, the president and CEO of the National Urban League, the oldest and largest community-based civil rights organization in the U.S., said the indictment against the SPLC was a “deeply troubling escalation in efforts to weaken and delegitimize the civil rights movement.”

“Let us be clear: this action is not about accountability. It is about intimidation. It is about silencing organizations that have spent decades confronting hate, protecting vulnerable communities, and advancing justice under the law,” Morial added.