Southern Poverty Law Center INDICTED for allegedly funneling millions to extremist and white supremacist groups

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center for allegedly funneling money to extremist groups.

The SPLC said earlier on Tuesday that the organization was being "targeted" by the Trump administration and speculated that the action was related to money paid to informants to gather information from hate groups.

'We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.'

In a post on social media, the Department of Justice accused the SPLC of paying $1 million to a National Alliance affiliate, $300K to an Aryan Nations affiliate, and $73K to former members of the Ku Klux Klan, among others.

"As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups; it was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a media briefing.

The indictment includes six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

"As the indictment lays out, after SPLC paid members of these extremist groups, it created work product that reported on these activities that the members participated in or contributed to," Blanche added. "And to that end, it was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing."

SPLC interim president and CEO Bryan Fair pre-empted the announcement in a video posted to social media.

"The focus appears to be on the SPLC's prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups," he explained. "This use of informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence."

He said that the SPLC shared the information gained through informants with law enforcement agencies but protected the identities of the informants.

RELATED: Southern Poverty Law Center attorney among 23 arrested for domestic terrorism

"Today the federal government has been weaponized to dismantle the rights of our nation's most vulnerable people," Fair added.

"We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve," Fair concluded.

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