Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a press conference with FBI Director Kash Patel at the Justice Department on April 21, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | getty images
The Justice Department announced an 11-count indictment Tuesday accusing the Southern Poverty Law Center of secretly funding the right-wing extremist groups it claimed to fight.
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanch said at a press conference, “The SPLC was not dismantling groups.” “Instead it was creating the very extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to promote racial hatred.”
The indictment was returned Tuesday by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Alabama, Blanch said. The SPLC, a nonprofit civil rights group, has been charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of money laundering, he said.
The SPLC said in a statement earlier Tuesday that it was the subject of a criminal investigation by the DOJ.
“Although we do not know all the details, it appears to focus on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather reliable intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Brian Fair said in a statement. The Associated Press.
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