MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been known for tracking hate groups. On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced federal criminal charges against the nonprofit in connection with its use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is covering this, and he's with us now in our studios. Good morning.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Before we get to the charges, would you just quickly remind us of what the Southern Poverty Law Center does?
LUCAS: So the Southern Poverty Law Center - it's also known as the SPLC. It's a 55-year-old civil rights organization. It has a storied history. It's based in Montgomery, Alabama. It started out as a law center doing a lot of civil rights work, trying to help end the vestiges of the Jim Crow era in the South. And its work later expanded to monitoring white supremacist groups, hate groups - including the KKK - and extremist groups more broadly.
MARTIN: What is the administration saying they did that they say is illegal?
LUCAS: Well, look. There are 11 counts in this indictment against the SPLC, including wire fraud, false statements to a bank and conspiracy to commit money laundering. And what the indictment alleges is that the SPLC defrauded its donors by telling them that the group was working to dismantle extremist groups but was, in fact, using donated money, the DOJ says, to fund extremist groups. Court papers say that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid around $3 million in total to informants affiliated with several hate groups. That includes the KKK. It says the SPLC set up bank accounts in the names of fictitious entities to pay these informants, the idea being to hide that the money was coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center. But the indictment says that in setting up these accounts, the SPLC was making false statements to the banks.
MARTIN: So how has the SPLC responded to this?
LUCAS: Well, the group put out a video statement before the charges were announced, saying that the SPLC was under federal investigation. And in that video, the nonprofit's CEO, Bryan Fair, defended the payments made to informants. He says these people risked their lives to infiltrate extremist groups and provide information on their activities. It was done to protect SPLC staff, to gather intelligence on violent threats. He said that information was shared with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI, and he said that information no doubt saved lives. He also said the SPLC will defend its work.
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BRYAN FAIR: We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.
LUCAS: Now, Fair also argued in that video that the SPLC is being targeted for political reasons.
MARTIN: Well, we're - and we have seen the Justice Department under this administration go after President Trump's critics, often at his explicit direction. So what about Fair's argument that this indictment is political?
LUCAS: Well, look. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche delivered this news at a press conference yesterday. He was asked about concerns about politics in this investigation. Here's what he said.
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TODD BLANCHE: Well, I mean, look. It's free from - there is nothing political about this indictment or this investigation.
LUCAS: Now, it is no secret, though, that conservatives have been highly critical of the Southern Poverty Law Center for years. They say it unfairly labels conservative organizations. One example they point to is an SPLC report in 2024 that described Turning Point USA - that's the group, of course, that was started by the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk - described it as a case study of the hard right. And then after Kirk was assassinated last year, the FBI ended a long-running relationship that it had with the Southern Poverty Law Center. And at the time, FBI Director Kash Patel said that the civil rights group had turned into what he called a partisan smear machine. Now, this prosecution, this case, of course, is just getting underway, so we will see how this all plays out in court.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thank you so much.
LUCAS: Thank you.
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