The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted on federal fraud charges that accused it of illegally raising millions of dollars to pay informants in white supremacist and other extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

An Alabama grand jury returned an indictment on April 21 with 11 counts of wire fraud, making false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to the Justice Department (DOJ).

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said SPLC used paid operatives within extremist circles to incite and intensify racial tensions, arguing the group fostered the very threats it claimed to fight.

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Blanche said in a statement.

“Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”

A federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama brought 11 charges against the nonprofit, including six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of money laundering.

The indictment covered the years from 2014 through 2023 and alleged that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) paid at least $3 million to at least eight informants affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, the National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the National Socialist Party of America, and the American Front.

In a twist that no one saw coming, one of the SPLC’s paid informants was a member of the leadership group that planned the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that resulted in one death, according to the DOJ.

“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 explained.

“And to that end, it was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing.”

Patel said the SPLC facilitated state and federal crimes by funding these groups.

“The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” Patel stated on X. 

“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,” Patel added.

The FBI director accused the SPLC of using donors to pay the leaders of extremist groups to stage “hate crimes”

They used the fraudulently raised money by lying to their donor network—thousands of Americans—to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups.

Furthermore, our investigation revealed that the Southern Poverty Law Center—on TOP of perpetuating this widespread decade-long multimillion dollar fraud—conducted more criminal activity.

They attempted to HIDE their criminal activity from our financial banking network.

They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial institutions that we rely on as everyday Americans were DECEIVED in believing that money was NOT coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud, but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud.

Watch the full press conference below:

But it gets even better worse, during an appearance on FOX News, acting AG Todd Blanche reveals the Biden regime actually closed the investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center — even though they were paying people to stage “hate crimes”.

As Nick Sortor noted, the Biden regime was directly involved in the coverup!

🚨 WOW! Acting AG Todd Blanche reveals the Biden regime actually CLOSED the investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center — even though they were PAYING people to stage “HATE CRIMES”

The Biden regime was DIRECTLY INVOLVED in the coverup!

Biden DOJ officials KNEW! pic.twitter.com/k8fDtloCDz

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 21, 2026

America First Legal broke down some additional ‘easter eggs’ in the whole 

/3 The SPLC also received early access to FBI hate-crime data and drafted talking points for Biden’s DOJ. https://t.co/M42eC5vYg2

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) April 21, 2026

/5 The SPLC was also personally asked by the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at Biden’s DOJ to flag “civil rights matters” for the department. https://t.co/UV7HJrSJKn

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) April 21, 2026

Simply put, the SPLC’s hypocrisy is now on full display – At the same time that the SPLC wielded unprecedented influence over federal civil rights enforcement, it was also allegedly bankrolling the very extremist groups it purported to seek to destroy.

As Tom Gantert reports for The Epoch Times, the SPLC announced earlier Tuesday that it was the subject of a Justice Department criminal investigation and was facing possible charges related to its use of “paid confidential informants” to infiltrate alleged “extremist” organizations.

Bryan Fair, interim president of the SPLC, said in a video posted on its website before the DOJ news conference that the investigation was “the most serious” of recent acts against it.

“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,” Fair said.

“This use of informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence.”

Fair said the SPLC no longer works with paid informants but did frequently share the information gained by them with law enforcement. Fair said the informants risked their lives to infiltrate radical groups and the SPLC began working with them during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

“There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives,” Fair said.

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) defended the SPLC on X.

“The DOJ uses paid informants all the time—why is it OK for them but not the SPLC?” Goldman wrote.

He said that the organization “plays a vital role in fighting hatred, yet has been unfairly targeted by [President Donald] Trump and House Republicans since day one.”

“This politicized intimidation needs to stop, now,” he said.

Kyle Shideler, the director for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, said the issue is not the use of informants—as long as the informants were not involved in criminal activity, which he presumed the DOJ investigation would determine.

“The issue is that the SPLC always sought to use its supposed expertise on Right Wing Extremists to slander their non-extremist opponents,” Shideler said on X.

“Linking groups like [Turning Point USA] (or my employer) to actual violent actors by putting them all on the same list was the political purpose.”

The Republican National Committee adopted a resolution in 2020 refuting the legitimacy of the SPLC when it came to identifying hate groups.

The resolution said the SPLC “makes a practice of incorrectly labeling persons and organizations as ‘hate groups,’” which mobilizes people to act “in hate and violence” against the people on the SPLC’s list.

The group has vowed to “vigorously defend” itself, its staff, and its work against the allegations.