Southern Poverty Law Center indicted for fraud, money laundering
politico.comNo one, literally no one has said the issue is with paying KKK and neo Nazi group for “information”.
The issue the DOJ has seems to be the alleged money laundering, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit fraud.
Which the article adresses, and it is ridiculous as well. Learn to read, and learn to think.
Another article that completely demolishes that poor attempt by a sycophant and a drunkard to do anything Trump ordered them to do:
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-doj-will-avenge-the-kkk-...
“The SPLC was not dismantling the groups,” Blanche said. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
There was always something suspicious about the SPLC, almost like a big brother of the ADL. Both organizations profit greatly from the very thing they supposedly fight. Why dismantle something when you can turn it into a cash cow?
The past decade has been a real eye opener for me. It pays to critique absolutely everything, especially those deemed above reproach.
There are less than 4,000 neo-Nazis in the US, and less than 8,000 KKK members. 12,000 equates to just 0.0035% of the U.S. population, the same number as people who suffer from dwarfism.
Combined, the SPLC and ADL are worth about a billion dollars.
Read the lawdork piece. And read the 990s from the organizations to see where the money goes.
It pays not to be bamboozled by bad faith actors like Todd Blanche.
>Combined, the SPLC and ADL are worth about a billion dollars.
To be fair, that seems like the vast majority weighted to the ADL.
But otherwise, yes, if you have ever looked at SPLC, it’s been a little curious at best. I believe nothing right away, but if the claim is that the demand for racism outweighed the supply, I can image less plausible things that the indictment.
Edit: I had no idea SPLC was so big. I guess I was confusing ADL for AIPAC.
The SPLC is bigger than the ADL in terms of financial size. The SPLC has about $787 million in net assets and $129 million annual revenue (FY2024), compared to the ADL’s $87 million net assets (consolidated) and $163 million revenue. This was surprising to me.
So what's your critique of Blanche?
My least favorite Golden Girl. Horribly over the top accent.
> There are less than 4,000 neo-Nazis in the US
Do you have a source on that statistic? Because I just don't believe it.
That source is a decade old and the number you quoted was the minimum for the 3 groups (out of many more) that had numbers. Contemporary reporting repeatedly points out the increase in the past decade.
I’m gonna guess that the ‘contemporary reporting’ you failed to cite is from the SPLC
Ignoring the many reports that cite the SPLC, a small sampling:
Here's Vice quoting the FBI: https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-fbi-just-put-white-natio...
Newsweek last year talking about the growth in the past decade: https://www.newsweek.com/neo-nazi-clubs-us-2095113
Reuters about dramatically escalating number of incidents: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/american-nazis-aryan-...
NPR: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188111769/active-club-hate-g...
SPLC activities: "...including filing litigation on voting rights and prisoner rights."
I can imagine these actions would be inconvenient for the Trump administration.
I predict that a settlement includes the following demands:
SPLC destroy all information it has about the Fred Trump lawsuit. Especially the records of Fred Trump arrested for punching a cop during a KKK rally in Queens.
Proud Boys, Oath Keepers etc. removed from the database as Jan 6 is rewritten.
And the grand jury testimony likely includes discussion about why SPLC shell companies are fraud but other shell companies are respectable. I predict this testimony was immediately sealed.
I imagine if they were committing fraud, that indeed would be convenient for the Trump Admin… it is also entirely unrelated if the fraud has taken place.
They were paying KKK members and Nazis. The scam was roughly the same as firemen paying arsonists to justify their salaries.
Like many NGOs/NPOs they suffer from perverse incentives: reduce or solve the problem and their reason to be disappears and the directors and higher staff no longer have well paying cushy jobs. You see this in NGOs "helping" addicts, homeless, etc. On paper they have a well meaning goal, in practice the goal is mostly for show and most of the money goes to paying salaries.
>The scam was roughly the same as firemen paying arsonists to justify their salaries.
What about paying low level arsonists to rat out their boss?
Private non-profits don’t do that. Police do that.
Everything from dog fighting rings to child trafficking has dedicated non-profit organizations with paid or volunteer staff doing investigative work. They collect OSINT, do surveillance, and yes, pay informants. As long as you don't break the law in the process (like doing surveillance from private property), you can build evidence to turn over to law enforcement to help open a case.
Something important to note here is informants aren't always in the organization or participating in the activity. It could be a truck stop attendant who texts you when the same guy stops in to buy a case of water and then slips it under the roll up door on his cargo van, or a dishwasher at a cafe who noticed a group of guys with the same tattoo. Things that on their own don't rise to the level of someone calling the police. Payments help people who otherwise would keep their mouth shut because they are in financial situations where they can't afford to lose their job.
Here’s the indictment: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1437146/dl
Why? It's not obvious why only cops can pay money for informants. You might say that they're paying criminals, but that's not clear either. The US has quite liberal free speech laws. You can say a lot of objectionable things without violating any laws.
> You might say that they're paying criminals, but that's not clear either. The US has quite liberal free speech laws.
You specified paying arsonists in your first comment.
I assume arson is a criminal action and not protected by free speech.
It's not illegal to give a criminal money. People donate to Trump all the time.
(I think they're probably giving to a PAC or a business, etc.)
True, like wire fraud and money laundering.
I didn’t say they were paying criminals. I said they were paying KKK and Nazis. I made an analogy to firemen and arsonists to make the point that they were fraudulently creating demand for their services, not to suggest that who they were paying were criminals. It’s not illegal on the face to be in the KKK or to be a Nazi, though certainly member of those groups have committed crimes in the past. The SPLC was engaging in fraud (allegedly) by both supporting hate groups while raising money from their donors to counter hate groups. And they were setting up fraudulent bank accounts to hide the money flows.
Here’s the indictment. Read it yourself. https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1437146/dl
If non-profits don't do that, what is SPLC being indicated for?
"In 2014, F-9 entered the headquarters of a violent extremist group and stole 25 boxes of their documents. F-9 coordinated payment for the copying of the materials with a high-level SPLC employee who had knowledge the documents had been stolen."
You are defending the KKK.
Seems like you’re lashing out with nonsense.
It is a copy-paste from the actual indictment. The people accusing SPLC of financing the KKK are literally putting in writing they paid informants to cripple the KKK.
Certainly checkbook journalism has had a past in the USA, but I don't recall anyone ever being charged with a serious crime over it.
They were paying people to infiltrate the KKK and Nazi groups. It is the same as the arson investigator paying someone to hang out with the kids who play with matches to see who is starting the fires.
The only "criminal" thing they did was encouraging non-white people to use their right to vote. How dare they do such a thing before the mid-term elections!
Here’s the indictment: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1437146/dl
I never doubted for a second that someone at the DoJ wrote a bunch of words. Unfortunately we have good cause to call them into question.
True. Legal reporting has been focusing on the “presumption of regularity” as having been eroded significantly by this administration.
“The presumption of regularity (omnia praesumuntur rite et solemniter esse acta) is a legal principle assuming that public officials and government agencies properly perform their duties, act in good faith, and follow legal procedures.”
>They were paying people to infiltrate the KKK and Nazi groups.
Is there even the slightest bit of proof to this claim? Has SPLC released details on this yet?
Because the crime is not sending KKK and neonazi groups more than a million dollars.
It’s that the committed wire fraud and money laundering to do it - allegedly.
>The only "criminal" thing they did was encouraging non-white people to use their right to vote.
The indictment is linked above. You should read it.
>Is there even the slightest bit of proof to this claim?
How dishonest are you? Very. Here is a copy-paste _from the indictment itself_ :
"In 2014, F-9 entered the headquarters of a violent extremist group and stole 25 boxes of their documents. F-9 coordinated payment for the copying of the materials with a high-level SPLC employee who had knowledge the documents had been stolen."
>The indictment is linked above. You should read it.
Right back at you.
By Trump's personalist DoJ. Presuming good faith on the part of Trump admin feds is a journalistic mistake.
I guess we might see as the case actually starts up, but I tend towards this basic posture:
> Infiltrating hate groups with informants is something that goes way back to the civil rights era and before. It's never been something only the government can do, especially when the government is more likely to be showing up for the white power happy hour every third Thursday at Chili's.
https://bsky.app/profile/andycraig.bsky.social/post/3mjzzezd...
And to be extremely skeptical of this administration working in good faith. The lawfare to destroy the good, to destroy institutions, by the very worst, is just out of control. The expression of power of the rich to destroy has gone up and up and up, and they keep getting by even as they destroy load bearing elements of society:
> I will say, frivolously suing a nonprofit for fraud has become A Thing recently. See, e.g., James Huntsman's suit against the Mormon Church or Elon Musk's against OpenAI.
> But rich people wasting money to punish nonprofits they no longer like is one thing;* the government doing it is another.
https://bsky.app/profile/smbrnsn.bsky.social/post/3mk224wrzm...
The FBI had been paying the SPLC to do just this sort of thing, until the new extremist administration stepped in. The people waging this case know all that. The donors new the work the SPLC did. And it's quite clear they can't be expected to show receipts, and safely show where all the money goes. https://bsky.app/profile/tomjoscelyn.bsky.social/post/3mk25s...
More despicable illegitemate mis-governance as usual by the most chaotic evil US government we have ever had.
Yes this is lawfare. They paid people to infiltrate. That’s exactly what going undercover is, and we don’t have any problems with that.
This is them applying a bias against an institution they don’t like by framing it as fraud and abuse (while they ransack the country at levels 100x larger)
The issue is not paying people to infiltrate it is the fraud and money laundering. Did you read the indictment?
It's from a bunch of useless known liars saying very little of substance & making lots of hot air. It's pretty unclear what the accusation really isal, amid all the grandstanding.
It sort of seems like they are saying: the SPLC didn't make it crystal clear what your money was going to and who we were paying, when. Some of it went to bad people. This is fraud.
On the contrary, I think many of the people funding SPLC are very happy about where there money is going. And it's clear why the SPLC can't tell you where exactly the money is going. Their work is so well known that the FBI has been (until the deplorables) paying them to do exactly this!
These people been and twist reality while saying nothing, while only obfuscating the truth. This case is the fraud.
Ok. 11 indictments in federal court for the hard crimes that typically require physical evidence of money, laundering, and wire fraud… yes that’s probably just from a bunch of use known liars, saying a little of substance.
So I guess that’s an answer that no you did not read the indictment?
Todd Blanche, Trump's personal lawyer, digs the DoJ deeper into irreversible reputational debt.