Those accusing the Southern Poverty Law Center of being in bed with White supremacists may be onto something.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, blasted the center at a Tuesday hearing over allegations that an SPLC employee was living with a paid informant. The employee, who oversaw millions of dollars in payments to “field sources,” was allegedly cohabitating with a member of the neo-Nazi group National Alliance.
“A Southern Poverty Law Center employee was in a romantic relationship with Field Source No. 9, a member of the racist National Alliance,” Mr. Jordan said. “This SPLC employee, who was supposed to be dismantling hate groups with the Intelligence Project, was dating the field source that they were paying, and, in fact, they had a joint bank account. Wow.”
The hearing focused on the Justice Department’s newly filed superseding indictment against the center for its since-discontinued operation using bank accounts created for fake companies to funnel cash to members of extremist groups.
The SPLC was indicted April 21 on 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The center has denied wrongdoing.
The superseding indictment, dated June 2, accused the center of secretly paying $4.1 million to hate group informants, up from the initial $3 million estimate.
“It wasn’t $3 million that they were paying these field sources; it was actually $4 million the Southern Poverty Law Center paid to field sources,” Mr. Jordan said. “And they didn’t just pay them to foment the hate they told their donors they were fighting, they actually dated them.”
The staffer and the informant, identified as “F-9,” shared a home and two bank accounts. According to the indictment, the center funneled $140,000 into the joint accounts from 2015 to 2021 — which the employee used to pay the couple’s personal living expenses — and paid the informant a total of $1.2 million over 20 years.
On the hot seat was SPLC interim President and CEO Bryan Fair, who defended the organization’s use of paid informants while repeatedly declining to answer specific questions about the federal allegations. He said they would be addressed by the center’s attorneys in federal court.
“We shared information that we learned through our confidential informant program with local, state and federal law enforcement to prevent racial violence against the public at large and protect our staff,” Mr. Fair said.
He denied allegations that the center helped generate hate by funneling cash to members of racist outlets.
“We don’t fund hate groups,” Mr. Fair said.
House Democrats did not hold back. They ripped the indictment, accusing the Trump administration of using the department to target its enemies, and lambasted the Republican leadership for holding a third hearing on the center in the past six months.
Rep. Jesus Garcia, Illinois Democrat, called the federal indictment a “pathetic hack job.”
“It’s astonishing to see Republicans choose to humiliate themselves for a third time with this hearing, which is more of an indictment of them than anyone else,” he said. “Everyone knows that the SPLC indictment is a joke, a bad one at that.”
The superseding indictment also accused the center of persuading Ku Klux Klan members to stay with the group despite their desire to leave, offering them monthly salaries of $1,200 and reimbursing them for expenses.
Covered expenses included “materials for cross burnings” and “Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods,” as well as “donations to extremist group leaders,” the indictment said.
One of the informants was involved in organizing the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a notorious White supremacist gathering. One woman died and 35 were injured when a rallygoer rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters.
The center’s fundraising nearly tripled after the event. Republicans accused the center of monetizing the tragedy to plump up its bank account, while Mr. Fair attributed the 2017 donation surge to President Trump’s election in November 2016.
“You fomented the hate, and then you made bank off of it, about $80 million in the following months after that rally,” said Rep. Harriet Hageman, Wyoming Republican.
Mr. Fair responded: “The SPLC doesn’t foment hate.”
Ms. Hageman shot back: “Well, on that day, you did.”
Republicans also blasted the center for its “hate map” listing mainstream conservative groups such as the Family Research Council and Moms for Liberty, while remaining mum on far-left groups such as antifa and Jane’s Revenge.
Mr. Fair noted that he will soon be stepping down as interim president. He took a one-year leave from his professorship at the University of Alabama School of Law to accept the temporary position.
“It has been one of the greatest honors of my life to work alongside and to represent the talented, dedicated, and principled SPLC staff,” he said in his testimony.
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