DOJ charges the Southern Poverty Law Center for fraud after it was found that they were funding, not fighting, right wing extremism.

 

Acting US Attorney Todd Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel. New York Post/AFP/Getty.

The Department of Justice has charged the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for fraud after it was found they were funding right wing groups. New York Post. The SPLC had donated millions of dollars to members of right wing groups, like the Klu Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and even an organizer of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The SPLC says that these people were informants, but the government accused them of hiding payments to them and for purporting to fight right wing extremism while funding them. The government argues that this was fraud as the payments to right wing groups was not disclosed to donors. The SPLC even went so far to use shell companies to hide the payments. 

My Comment:

It's been a truism on the right that the demand for rightwing extremism far outweighs the actual supply and that most noticeable extremist groups on the right are infiltrated with informants and undercover law enforcement agents. This is very strong evidence that the idea isn't off base. The SPLC was funding right wing groups for years.

The SPLC is saying that these folks were just informants, but even if that is true and this wasn't an effort to make a problem where non existed, what they were doing is indeed fraudulent. Paying informants doesn't appear to be illegal, but not disclosing that to the donors that paid for it was. You can't claim to be an anti-right wing network while at the same time paying the people that they are supposed to be fighting, many of the people that gave money to the SPLC would not have done so if that had been disclosed. 

Using shell companies to hide the payments is a big no-no as well. The victims in this case would be the banks that processed the payments, which is illegal to lie about. It's something that I don't think the SPLC can defend, though their argument is that it was to protect their informants. Though somehow I doubt that the leadership of these right wing groups were checking their memberships for unusual payments from the SPLC. 

The SPLC's involvement in the Unite the Right rally also makes a lot of sense. The rally, which ended with a death after a woman was hit by a car, pretty much destroyed the far right in America and it's clear now that the SPLC was helping out quite a bit. They were paying for transportation to the rally and I wouldn't be surprised if the tiki torches were there idea as well. 

The damage that rally did to the right is hard to understate. The right was ascendant when the rally happened but it really did change things. Suddenly the right was scary again with the tiki torches sending the exact opposite message that they wanted to send. And it didn't help that someone died. To find out that the left was deeply involved in that rally to the point they were paying for transportation is not surprising, but it does vindicate a lot of what I believe. 

Will the government get a conviction? You never can tell these days. Given the evidence, I don't think there is much doubt that the SPLC is guilty of at least some of what they are accused of, I don't know how you defend using shell companies legally. But with all prosecutions of left wing crimes, I worry about jury nullification, activists judges and 100 other lawfare efforts that the left is going to use to defend the SPLC. Time will tell if the charges stick...