If there is one towering accomplishment of the Southern Poverty Law Center in its 55 years of existence, it’s bringing in money – lots of it. The Montgomery, Ala.-based, 501(c)(3) Leftist nonprofit group, dedicated to “dismantling” white supremacy, holds nearly $800 million in assets. Some of those funds, say federal prosecutors, were derived from financial crimes. On April 21, a grand jury indicted the SPLC on 11 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering based on events during 2014-23. The Center allegedly misled donors by falsifying facts related to the use of over $3 million for domestic espionage. “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” said Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked.”

On the basis of donations, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s connection to radical multibillionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations (OSF) would seem insignificant. OSF records through 2024 show it has provided just one donation of $75,000 to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and that was back in 2016. The Soros network has given away far greater sums to other organizations. But that $75,000, intended as seed money for an “Anti-Hate Table” to protect Muslim, Arab and South Asian community organizations, speaks of a tacit coalition between the two mega-nonprofits to gin up hatred toward the Right generally. The grant was part of a much larger $10 million Open Society Foundations project to “confront hate” unveiled on November 22, 2016. Donald Trump had just been elected president, and OSF was in panic mode. Its press release, filled with strident moralizing, underscored the panic:

In response to the national wave of hate incidents, the threat of forcible removal of undocumented immigrants, and the fear pervading communities across the country, the Open Society Foundations today announced a $10 million initiative to support and protect those targeted by hateful acts.

Harsh rhetoric and policy proposals during the 2016 presidential campaign that drew on racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslims, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT, and other forms of hate have encouraged a wave of physical and verbal attacks nationwide. The Southern Poverty Law Center has received over 700 reports of “hateful harassment and intimidation” since November 8.

In mission and in rhetoric, the Open Society Foundations is close to the Southern Poverty Law Center. It even quotes the SPLC’s questionable statistics. The villains in their morality play are Rightist organizations, especially those that oppose Third World mass immigration (including the “undocumented” kind) and enforceable anti-white “diversity” quotas. All such groups are presumed guilty of hate. None must escape the public spotlight.

To dramatize its position, the SPLC has created and regularly updates a “hate map” identifying the home base of “hateful” organizations. Yes, some of these organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and the National Socialist Party of America, with their documented history of violence and intimidation, are nasty pieces of work. They really are a threat. But others on the hit list, such as Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA, and the Vdare Foundation, are nothing of the sort. Their presence speaks of the SPLC’s recklessly broad definition of hate. Vdare, for example, made the list back in 2004 because as a journalism outlet, it regularly published critics of our elites’ obsession with forcing demographic diversity on its citizens, especially via mass immigration. The SPLC, like the Soros network, unwilling to distinguish between proverbial good and bad apples, prefers to place all the apples in a basket labeled “hate.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center does more than advocate. It also conducts field projects. And the most effective of these projects is a now-shelved program that paid agent provocateurs to infiltrate right-wing “hate groups,” although some already were members. The informants’ task was to gather incriminating information on the target group and then report back to the SPLC. In this way, the Center more effectively could appeal to donors to step up contributions. After all, America was facing an epidemic of hate. In return, it used the donations to pressure social media and financial companies to de-platform offending organizations, and to file civil lawsuits with a seemingly endless discovery process (“lawfare”). This self-fulfilling prophecy has proven lucrative. In 2024, the most recent year available, the Southern Poverty Law Center generated $106 million in cash donations. Other sources raised the revenue grand total to around $129 million. A crowded hate map means more money.

The Center terminated the informant program a couple years ago. But evidence of deception was there to see. That is what led to the current Trump Department of Justice probe and ensuing indictments. According to the DOJ, the Southern Poverty Law Center back in the 1980s launched a covert operation in which it hired individuals who either belonged to far-Right organizations, or who were outside volunteers, to infiltrate them. Crucially, the operation involved paying undisclosed sums of money to officials and organizers of the targeted groups – the very sorts of groups the SPLC vociferously opposes – that added up to over $3 million. As the indictment covers the 2014-23 period, the project from the outset had been in force for decades.

It must be emphasized that the Justice Department’s charges are not against the infiltrations per se. Nonprofit groups spying on other rival nonprofit groups is nothing new. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a government intelligence agency anywhere in the world that doesn’t send its agents to infiltrate an adversary. The smoking gun in this case was the financial deception that accompanied the infiltration. By telling donors that their money would be used to gather information, and then using it to subsidize extremist groups for future potential crimes, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s actions likely constituted fraud. FBI Director Kash Patel puts it this way:

The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public. They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups – even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes. That is illegal – and this is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved.

How the Southern Poverty Law Center pulled an operation like this off, and remained undetected for so long, was a matter of networking. The Center had cultivated connections with various unnamed individuals known as “field sources” or “Fs.” Each was attuned to the behavior and the plans of their respective organization. The indictment lists several persons in this role, with corresponding organizations and dollar figures: an affiliate of the National Alliance (more than $1 million); an affiliate of the Aryan Nations (more than $300,000); a member of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017 ($270,000); a former chairman of the National Alliance (more than $140,000); several former Ku Klux Klan members (more than $73,000); president of American Front (more than $19,000). The SPLC in each case supervised the payment process.

Crucial to the operation was money laundering. As the Southern Poverty Law Center feared public exposure, certain Center-affiliated persons allegedly coaxed and enabled the infiltrators to open accounts at the FDIC-insured “Bank-1” and “Bank-2” under the names of fake organizations. The indictment listed five such entities, suggesting there were others. They were: Center Investigative Agency, Fox Photography, North West Technologies, Tech Writers Group, and Rare Books Warehouse. “These fictitious entities,” stated the grand jury report, “were never incorporated, had no bona fide employees, and conducted no actual business.” Their sole purpose was to conceal “the true nature, source, ownership and control of the donated funds.”

This money laundering scheme continued until 2020. That year, Bank-1, suspecting deception, conducted an internal probe and concluded that fraud indeed was at work. Thereafter, notes the indictment, a Southern Poverty Law Center employee requested that the bank close all accounts associated with the fake names and “transfer the remaining balances in these accounts to a Bank-1 account ending in ‘6050’ held in the name of the SPLC.” This enabled the SPLC to employ wire communications for concealment. “Specifically, from in or about August 2020 and continuing through in or about August 2023,” read the document, “the SPLC used the ACH [Automated Clearing House] system to pay Fs with donated funds. These ACH payments were masked with monikers such as ‘Rarebooks050’ and ‘IPResearchCON050.’ These masked ACH transactions were designed to conceal the true nature, source, ownership and control of the donated funds the SPLC was paying to the Fs.”

As a final point, the grand jury indicated that the SPLC faces asset forfeiture under certain sections of Title 18 and Title 28 of the U.S. Code. Where applicable, the defendant would have to forfeit “any property, real or personal, involved in such offense, or any property traceable to such property” if the property cannot be located; has been transferred to a third party; has been placed beyond the jurisdiction of the court; has been substantially diminished in value; or has been commingled with other property which cannot be divided without difficulty.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, predictably, is denying all allegations. In a prepared statement, the group said it would “vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work,” claiming that the infiltration program saved innocent lives from far-Right terrorism. “Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also the most important work we do,” said interim SPLC President (and former Board Chairman) Bryan Fair. “The actions by the DOJ will not shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the Civil Right movement becomes a reality for all.”

Yet aside from the fact that the 11-count indictment is based on sound, detailed evidence of financial wrongdoing, and that its termination resulted from fear of prosecution, the Southern Poverty Law Center has a well-earned reputation for smearing legitimate organizations on the Right. Unwilling or unable to distinguish between an argument and an act of terrorism, the SPLC regularly lumps the two together, all the better to arouse the moral conscience of donors and put the entire Right out of commission. Its below-ground tactics continue today, doxxing being a preferred tactic. This April, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), conservative media influencer Chaya Raichik included a screenshot of the names and locations of six conservatives, including herself, prepared by the SPLC as evidence of the public threat posed by the Right. Raichik wrote: “The SPLC literally has a hit list of Conservatives on their website including locations so their followers know where to target us. Our crimes for being put on a target list range from opposing open borders and sex changes for kids, to ‘male supremacy.’”

The Southern Poverty Law Center is not about to stray from its game plan. Founded in 1971, and headed for almost a half-century by civil rights lawyer Morris Dees until his ouster in 2019 (Richard Cohen, who co-headed the organization during 2003-19, also was forced out), the Center knows the value of exaggerating and overplaying verbal and physical assaults on nonwhites and other “marginalized” persons. The SPLC, and the Left as a whole, depend on raising the danger posed by white racism, apparently a rapidly spreading cancer requiring emergency intervention and funds. The goal ultimately isn’t about money; it’s about power to define issues, reward friends and punish enemies. As the demand for evidence of “white racism” keeps expanding, so must the supply of evidence. The Southern Poverty Law Center is the main supplier.

As the federal probe expands, additional indictments may lie ahead. Officials and employees of the two alleged financial enablers, “Bank-1” and “Bank-2,” for example, may have been aware that fraud was the SPLC’s intent. Officials in the former Biden administration also might find themselves in the DOJ spotlight. According to Acting Attorney General Blanche, the investigation actually began during the first Trump administration, but was canceled by Biden’s people when reports of banks flagging informant accounts surfaced.

With assets nearing the billion-dollar mark, the Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t have to worry about finding quality legal help. Protecting its reputation, however, will be a more difficult challenge. Reliable donors may balk at sending money, as association with a corrupt organization presents personal risks. As it is, the SPLC lately has been pulling back. In June 2024, under then-President Margaret Huang, the Center laid off nearly 80 staffers, or about one-fourth of its employees. Huang’s departure the next year was the result of vigorous protests by the remaining employees. Times may have gotten tough for the SPLC, but they do have an ace in the hole in the Soros-headed Open Society Foundations.

Carl F. Horowitz is an NLPC senior fellow.

photo credit: Anthony Crider; cropped by Beyond My Ken, Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ Rally (35780274914) crop, CC BY 2.0