SPLC Indicted for Funding the Hate It Pretended to Fight

The Southern Poverty Law Center, long notorious as a partisan smear factory masquerading as a civil rights watchdog, was hit with an 11-count federal indictment Tuesday for wire fraud, false statements to banks, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. (see below)

A federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, alleges the SPLC secretly funneled over $3 million in donor dollars between 2014 and 2023 to individuals tied to violent extremist outfits — including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and National Socialist Party of America — all while raking in contributions by pretending to fight the very “hate” it was allegedly bank rolling. 

According to the indictment:

The objective of the scheme and artifice was to obtain money via donations through materially false representations and omissions about what the donated funds would be used for.

In order to covertly pay the individuals, the SPLC opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities. The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the individuals. In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche didn’t mince words at the joint press conference with FBI Director Kash Patel: “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” He added that the organization was “not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

“The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “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.”

This bombshell indictment is the latest — and most damning — chapter in the SPLC’s troubled history. Once respected for taking on actual Klan violence in the 1970s and ’80s, the organization devolved into a lavish, multimillion dollar grift machine that weaponized “hate group” labels against mainstream conservatives, Christians, pro-family organizations, and parental rights groups.

The SPLC’s notorious “Hate Map” and annual “Year in Hate and Extremism” reports have long been criticized as partisan hit lists, grouping conservative groups, like Moms for Liberty, with actual neo-Nazis. It has faced lawsuits and settlements for false labeling, including a notable apology to Dr. Ben Carson. The FBI under Director Patel later severed all ties with the SPLC, branding it a “partisan smear machine.”

Their inciting rhetoric hasn’t stayed on paper.

In August 2012, after the SPLC branded the Family Research Council (FRC) — a respected pro-family policy organization — a “hate group” for its biblical stance on marriage and human sexuality, gunman Floyd Lee Corkins II stormed FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C. Armed with a pistol and a backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches (meant to be smeared on his victims). Corkins told investigators he chose the target directly from the SPLC’s hate map. He opened fire, wounding security guard Leo Johnson, who heroically stopped the massacre before Corkins could carry out his plan to kill as many people as possible. Corkins was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.

One particularly ugly chapter involved Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA. In the months leading up to Kirk’s tragic assassination in September 2025, the SPLC intensified its attacks, smearing TPUSA on its “hate map” and repeatedly targeting Kirk in reports that painted the conservative youth movement as promoters of “violent rhetoric” and authoritarianism. Many observers noted how such reckless demonization contributed to a poisonous public climate, with many accusing the SPLC of having blood on its hand following Kirk’s assassination.

In October, 2025, Elon Musk charged that the SPL was “guilty of incitement to murder Charlie Kirk.”

SPLC is guilty of incitement to murder Charlie Kirk https://t.co/iGx88ObLTE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2025

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) blasted the expected media spin on X, responding to a New York Times headline that soft-pedaled the Klan connection: “Nice headline. You left out ‘SPLC was funding the Klan.’ Propagandize much?”

Committing wire fraud to send money to the KKK is an odd way to safeguard democracy, Senator. https://t.co/aVMAxMiP3g

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) April 22, 2026

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) predictably cried foul, calling the indictment a “vindictive campaign” against organizations that “fight white supremacy,” “safeguard our democracy” and warning it signals an assault on civil rights watchdogs.

Sure, Chuck. 

California Globe has long documented the SPLC’s role in this despicable and dangerous grift.

In its coverage of media attacks on Moms for Liberty, the Globe highlighted how POLITICO and other outlets, including the Sacramento Bee, regurgitated SPLC “research” to smear concerned parents as dangerous extremists. Similar hit pieces have painted everyday Californians fighting for school transparency as “violent” or “toxic,” with the SPLC’s notorious Hate Map serving as the go-to source for such smears.

The Globe has also called out the SPLC’s deeper ideological rot.

In reporting on a UC Berkeley conference on “Male Supremacism and Right-Wing Studies,” contributors labeled the organization a “racist, anti-white” entity that funds left-wing causes and co-sponsors events designed to delegitimize patriotic Americans. Other Globe pieces tie the SPLC to broader networks of activist groups that attack conservatives while shielding their own allies from scrutiny.

Sophia Lorey, Outreach Director at the California Family Council and a former college athlete, offers a vivid illustration of how the SPLC operated. In 2023, after Lorey spoke at a public library event and stated the simple truth that “men don’t belong in women’s sports,” the SPLC published an article attempting to link her remarks to subsequent bomb threats against local schools and the library. The piece portrayed her as an “anti-trans extremist” and helped place the California Family Council on the SPLC’s Hate Watch list.

In 2023 SPLC wrote an article trying to connect me to bomb threats to schools bc I said in a speech at a library “men don’t belong in women’s sports”

This led to @CAFamily where I work being placed on the SPLC Hate Watch list

Feeling vindicatedhttps://t.co/VWLi4moj77 pic.twitter.com/UPayFbgcUg

— Sophia Lorey (@SophiaSLorey) April 22, 2026

The federal indictment isn’t a setback. It’s the death blow to a decades-long grift. No more hiding behind “civil rights.” No more taxpayer-adjacent partnerships. No more media treating this partisan smear factory as gospel.

The Southern Poverty Law Center manufactured the hate it pretended to fight, profited from the division, and left a trail of wrecked reputations and real victims in its wake. Chuck Schumer doesn’t fear the assault on civil rights, he fears the end of the Democrat party’s favorite smear merchant.