Manufactured hate: DOJ indicts Southern Poverty Law Center

by WorldTribune Staff, April 22, 2026 Non-AI Real World News

The Southern Poverty Law Center had been indicted in Alabama on federal charges which accuse the leftist organization of paying individuals in groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to “stoke racial hatred.”

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 Department of Justice.

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.

The indictment alleged that “the SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.”

Independent media has routinely called out the SPLC for its publication of its so-called “hate map” which targets a number of conservative organizations.

One of the groups the SPLC added in 2024 to the “hate map” was Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. One day before Kirk was assassinated, the SPLC had featured Kirk on their “Hatewatch” newsletter.

Related: Report: Major corporations still rely on SPLC ‘hate map’ to black-list conservative non-profits, October 20, 2025

Human Events editor Jack Posobiec noted that the SPLC had worked hand-in-glove with the Biden-Harris regime.

“Reminder that the list of Catholic churches for the Biden FBI to target came from the SPLC,” Posobiec wrote. “The Steve Scalise shooter was an SPLC follower.”

Posobiec added:

Just gonna say it: There is no way the Biden FBI was working so closely with the SPLC and didn’t know about these paid informants staging hate crimes. That’s how you know this was a federal cutout operation.

What a moment: This means the DOJ has finally released definitive proof that systemic racism does exist. And that it was being paid for by the SPLC.

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” acting Attorney General Todd 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.”

According to the Justice Department, 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.

The individual who was part of the leadership for the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned” the rally and “and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC.” This individual also “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.”

One section of the indictment alleged that one of the SPLC’s “field sources”—known as F-unknown in the document—”was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.”

Another source was “an officer in the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club,” the indictment said. the SPLC had paid this person over $300,000 between 2014 and 2020.

Additionally, the SPLC had paid “the reported National President of American Front” who was also a “convicted federal felon for his participation in a cross burning. Between 2016 and 2019, the SPLC secretly paid [the ‘field source’] more than $19,000.

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.”

New York Democrat Rep. Daniel Goldman 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.

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