The Justice Department filed a superseding indictment Tuesday in federal court in Montgomery, Alabama, alleging the Southern Poverty Law Center, or splc, paid white nationalists and Ku Klux Klan members to stay inside hate groups. Prosecutors said the payments totaled $4.1 million and included reimbursement for cross-burning expenses.
The filing adds detail to the government's case, which now centers on whether donor money was used to support the groups the center said it was monitoring. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at an April 21 news conference that the center was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
Todd Blanche and the April 21 claim
Blanche tied the case to a broader accusation about how the center handled confidential sources. The Justice Department initially charged the Southern Poverty Law Center in April with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a bank and money laundering conspiracy. The new filing expands the factual allegations behind those charges.
The center's attorneys took the opposite view in court papers, writing that it got “helpful information” from the confidential informants that was later provided to law enforcement. They also wrote that the Department of Justice also knows that these confidential informants helped law enforcement put violent extremists in jail.
F-31, F-32 and Rare Books Warehouse
Prosecutors said two Klan members identified as F-31 and F-32 came to the center in 2010 in fear for their safety and wanting to leave the hate group. The indictment alleges they were paid $1,200 per month, plus expenses, through a shell corporation called Rare Books Warehouse to remain in the Klan.
The filing says some of that money was used to recruit new members and make Klan robes. It also alleges they were reimbursed for costs tied to cross-burning events, including wood and fuel.
Eight informants and donor money
The indictment says fictitious companies concealed from donors that $4.1 million in payments went to field sources between 2014 and 2023. The eight informants included a Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and a leader of a chat group that organized the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
One source allegedly took $270,000 from the center from 2015 to 2023. Another source allegedly received $1.2 million for activities that included stealing 25 boxes of documents from the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
For readers looking at the case now, the immediate issue is whether prosecutors can tie the money trail to the conduct they allege. The indictment says the payments reached into recruiting, robes, rallies, chapter building and extremist literature, while the defense says the informants' work helped law enforcement. That conflict now sits at the center of the case in Montgomery.
