SPLC indictment and coverage: point and counterpoint
? BREAKING: Acting AG Blanche and FBI Director Patel announce a grand jury has INDICTED leftist NGO Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 COUNTS
This is MASSIVE!
SPLC said they were "fighting white supremacy," but they were "MANUFACTURING the extremism it purports to expose" by… pic.twitter.com/WtyvBUuwrW
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 21, 2026
The DOJ indictment of the SPLC is a huge deal on many levels – including the way the press is already spinning it. First there was the preemptive strike: the Atlantic hit piece on Kash Patel that was basically anonymously-sourced gossip. Now there is the coordinated approach of the MSM, which is to say oh, the SPLC was only doing the perfectly normal thing of paying informants, just like the FBI!
But you know what? The SPLC is not a government investigative agency such as the FBI, which has such powers. It’s a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization that deceived its donors and deceived the banks. Nor were the people it paid mere fringe players reporting back on activities. The SPLC’s activities involved being major and organizing players in the “white supremacist” functions it purported to be fighting.
Help create the problem and magnify it, and then raise gobs and gobs of money off it, lying all the way by creating fake companies to hide what you’re doing. Not just business as usual, although the MSM would like its readers (and/or headline-readers) to believe that.
The story has made me go back to look up certain details of the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the one that was so very useful to the Democrats and that Biden (or his speechwriters) made the centerpiece of his 2020 campaign. I found some fascinating things like this, from the late Scott Adams in 2023:
The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was “an American intel op against Trump.”
Not by the government, as far as we know. But at least to a significant degree by the SPLC.
There’s also this, which means more to me now than it did back in 2017 when the rally occurred [emphasis mine]:
Prominent far-right figures in attendance included [Richard] Spencer, entertainer and internet troll Baked Alaska, lawyer Augustus Invictus, former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke, Identity Evropa leader Nathan Damigo, Traditionalist Workers Party leader Matthew Heimbach … Right Side Broadcasting Network host Nick Fuentes …
Fuentes, grifter extraordinaire; I’m convinced he’s never actually been on the right, either.
Of course, even without this indictment it’s been clear that the SPLC has long been a propaganda outfit that falsely lists some groups as being on the “far” right or being “hate” groups when they’re not.
Who was it that the SPLC paid? The indictment doesn’t say exactly – that is, it doesn’t name names but just describes positions. But the indictment is well worth reading; you can find it here. I can’t cut and paste from it, but here’s my summary.
It mentions that “unbeknownst” to donors, the SPLC funded “leaders and organizers” of these groups – which doesn’t sound like the usual informants. The organization called them “field informants” but they actively promoted racist groups. One of them, for example, was part of the leadership chat group that helped organize the Unite the Right rally . “The field source made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.” One of the “informants” was the “imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America”. Quite a few other were higher-ups in these organizations, not just nonentities.
To pay these so-called informants, the SPLC created covert bank accounts under fictitious entities, and they made false statements about the accounts and the entities. The indictment lists at least eight fictitious entities such as “Fox Photography” – all with no employees. The creation of these fake companies makes it quite clear that this was not just paying informants but a coverup about paying these people and something that was never disclosed to donors, plus something the SPLC knew was wrong. Why else lie and commit bank fraud? And they defrauded donors by saying the money they raised – and there was plenty of it – would be used to dismantle such groups.
The SPLC has always made me quite uncomfortable. They radiate lies and malice.
Proud Boys warned against attending Unite the Right, saying it was a trap.
One of the organizers was the guy who founded Patriot Front.
Oh, and one of the organizers was a big Clinton supporter until sometime after Trump was POTUS.
Just read that the Woman running for MI Governor was on the Board at the time of the Unite the Right.
Yes, the hit piece on Patal is disgusting. Yes, we see all this fraud and corruption, but nothing will happen. The left will never admit to any wrong doing, and no one will go to prison. At least not until the Dems take the WH.
Patriot Front, that astroturfed group of clean cut well dressed nerds that show up in U Haul rental trucks. They looked like low level FBI agents working a side hustle (to me anyway).
The good old days of “democracy.” (Sarc)
The criminal activity is bank fraud and money laundering. The indictment is in Alabama, where a federal jury might very well convict if the evidence is there. This might be the end of the SPLC. It’s ironic, since its first activity was financially destroying the KKK.
The subject of to whom these payments were surreptitiously made is the political scandal. They could ride that out, with the help of the legacy media, but the bank fraud is another matter.
Yeah, this is a big deal. I can’t wait to see what my D acquaintances say…..if at all.
Assuming only for the sake of argument that SPLC had hired infiltrators to do nothing more than merely spy, then
“To pay these so-called informants, the SPLC created covert bank accounts under fictitious entities”
would not be in and of itself nefarious. Obviously, spies would become ineffective if they were found to be in the employ of the SPLC as opposed to an apolitical entity.
Ira:
I am pretty sure that bank fraud is bank fraud and that if the SPLC had paid anyone from a fictitious entity that would have been illegal. The FBI can do it, but not the SPLC or the like.
In addition, there’s the fraud on the donors.
Setting up fictitious companies to pay people acting merely as spies is not in and of itself evil. Spying, depending on circumstances might be. And while there may be technical bank law issues, if the spying really was merely for protection and not to further acts that donors would not like, I think there is no fraud.
I am not so sure that paying someone from a fictitious company is illegal.
The fraud would be creating a problem that would not otherwise exist in order to collect donations.
Ira, read Neo’s response again slowly. Especially the first line.
I worked for an insurance and had to take yearly training on recognizing money laundering (even though my job was in tech, not sales). Active efforts to disguise the source and movement of funds, such as routing money through shell companies, is money laundering. It doesn’t matter why you are doing it, it’s a crime in and of itself. A financial institution that facilitates or permits it is going to be in big trouble, as is the group doing it.
It seems to be the DNC talking point that paying informants is not an issue which is true as far as it goes. Lots of media organizations pay people who provide them information but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a media organization that didn’t make those payments directly and above board.
Would anyone be surprised if under-employed firemen set fires to prove to a town how much they were needed?
Same principle is at work here. The SPLC has been working its grift for decades. But, now, the sort of political extremism it made bank from is marginal at best. So, what’s an enterprising social justice warrior to do? Make a market for the product, that’s what!
Christopher B:
Actually, it’s not so common to pay sources in “journalism.” It’s considered tainted information when you do that – although not illegal if you pay directly and not through fictitious entities. It’s tabloids that do it, for the most part.
Christopher, from what I know of the federal money laundering law, there is no federal money laundering crime if the these elements of the following statutes are not met:
18 U.S. Code § 1956
(a)
(1)Whoever, knowing that the property involved in a financial transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, conducts or attempts to conduct such a financial transaction which in fact involves the proceeds of specified unlawful activity—
18 U.S. Code § 1957
(a) Whoever, in any of the circumstances set forth in subsection (d), knowingly engages or attempts to engage in a monetary transactionin criminally derived property of a value greater than $10,000 and is derived from specified unlawful activity, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).