How A Guilty Verdict Could Push The Southern Poverty Law Center To The Brink Of Ruin

The Southern Poverty Law Center could face civil forfeiture and fines if they are convicted for allegedly providing millions in donations to members of extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America, the Justice Department’s Middle District of Alabama told The Daily Wire on Wednesday.

It is unclear at this time if any individuals will be indicted as part of the years-long investigation, but the DOJ maintains that the investigation into the SPLC is still ongoing after the federal grand jury indictment in the Middle District of Alabama on Tuesday. Specifically, the indictment argues that “donors were not told that some of the donated funds were to be used by the SPLC to pay high-level leaders of violent extremist groups and others.”

Beyond just legal consequences, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco explained that corporations that work with SPLC might also be inclined to cut ties with them.

“It’s all propaganda designed to harm their enemies for political reasons. But with this indictment, I would think, we’ll probably see another wave of companies. Maybe the final ones that rely on them say, ‘It’s probably enough,’” he said.

Salesforce notably stopped using SPLC’s “metrics” that could have potentially driven business decisions, which The Heritage Foundation celebrated at the time.

The left-wing group has always claimed to target legitimate hate groups, but has been facing pushback for its blanket labeling of conservative organizations as hateful— and per the Justice Department’s indictment, is facing multiple charges for wire fraud, giving false information to a bank, and “conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.”

Tedesco explained that the trial will need to determine whether or not the SPLC was “actually funding the activities and the leaders and members of these organizations, essentially to subsidize what they were doing so they could go back to their donors and ask them for money.”

The indictment explains that the group’s “paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website” and allegedly misled their donors in the process.

The grand jury charged that the SPLC “opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities” and lied about the accounts to “keep the scheme going.”

“The SPLC also had a field source who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia,” the indictment stated. “That field source made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.”

The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.

“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,” SPLC interim president and CEO Bryan Fair said on Tuesday prior to the indictment announcement, according to Fox News.