STORY: :: Blanche says the Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on fraud charges over its use of paid informants 

:: Washington, D.C. / April 21, 2026

:: Todd Blanche, Acting United States Attorney General

"Today, a few minutes ago, in the middle district of Alabama, a grand jury returned an 11-count indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering." // "In total, according to the indictment, between 2014 and 2023, SPL paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, at least. These individuals were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan United Klans of America, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the National Socialist Party of America, Nazis, and the American Front." // 

REPORTER: "Can you explain again what the fraud is here? Exactly. Are you saying it's illegal for the SPLC to pay money to people that are in hate groups or something about the way this was done?" //  

BLANCHE: "And so as the indictment points out, there's different ways that they raise money and and no and no fundraising efforts that the investigation found did they say, "Oh, and by the way, we're going to give a million bucks to the Ku Klux Klan." So that's fraud. So that's wire fraud. So and then the bank fraud part of it is, is you have KYC, you have an obligation to tell your financial institution what the corporation or the entity that you're opening an account for does. And the allegations in the indictment are that these were fictitious companies that were set up. And so there were certain information sworn to by SDLC executives about what the entities were doing that that we allege is false."

SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said in a video statement that the Justice Department investigation's "focus appears to be on the SPLC's prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups." Fair said such measures were necessary to protect SPLC staff from violence.

Trump administration officials and conservative figures have criticized the Alabama-based SPLC for labeling some far-right entities hate groups. FBI Director Kash Patel in October ended a years-long working relationship between his agency and the SPLC, calling the group a "partisan smear machine" that had been used to defame people and inspire violence.

Patel's action came weeks after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, whose conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, was included in SPLC's "Hate Map" and described as an anti-government group.

An SPLC spokesperson declined to comment beyond Fair's recorded remarks.

Formed in the early 1970s to defend the legal rights of Black Americans following the U.S. civil rights reforms of the 1960s, the SPLC was instrumental in obtaining convictions of members of white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.