Published April 21, 2026
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was indicted on federal fraud charges after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) accused the civil rights group of improperly collecting millions of dollars to pay informants to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and other far-right groups.
The Justice Department alleged that the law center defrauded donors to fund the very ideology it claims to be fighting.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
It noted that between 2014 and 2023, at least $3 million was paid to officials of the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, National Socialist Party of America, and other far-right groups.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these organizations; rather, it was paying sources to incite racial hatred and creating the extremism it claims to oppose,” Blanche said.
The civil rights group faces charges including wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering conspiracy. The Justice Department filed the lawsuit in Alabama, where the organization is based.
The indictment comes shortly after the SPLC revealed the existence of a criminal investigation into a program that pays informants to infiltrate far-right groups and gather information about their activities.
The group said the program was used to monitor threats of violence. It added that the information was frequently shared with local and federal law enforcement agencies.
SPLC CEO Brian Fair said the organization will “vigorously protect ourselves, our staff and our work.”
Blanche said the funds were transferred from the center through two different bank accounts, then loaded onto prepaid cards and given to members of far-right groups such as the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club.
Blanche added that the organization never revealed the details of its informant program to donors.
“Nonprofits are required by nonprofit law to be transparent and honest with donors about what they’re putting their money into, what their mission statement is, and what their fundraising goals are,” he said.
The indictment includes details about at least nine anonymous informants who were paid by the SPLC through a secret program that prosecutors say began in the 1980s.
They were known within the SPLC as field sources, or “Fs,” according to the indictment. One of the informants received more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023 while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, according to the indictment. The other was an Imperial Wizard of the United Clans of America.
The SPLC said the program was kept silent to protect the safety of informants.
“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the civil rights movement, which saw bombings of churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and killings of activists that the justice system did not resolve,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from our informants saved lives.”
The Montgomery, Alabama-based SPLC was founded in 1971 and has used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups.
The nonprofit is a popular target among Republicans, who view it as overly left-wing and partisan.
The investigation could further fuel concerns that President Donald Trump’s administration is using the Justice Department to go after its opponents and critics.
This follows a number of other investigations into President Trump’s enemies that raise questions about whether law enforcement has been turned into a political weapon.
The SPLC has come under heavy criticism from conservatives, who accuse it of unfairly smearing right-wing organizations as far-right groups because of their views. The center regularly criticizes President Trump’s statements and policies on issues such as voting rights and immigration.
The center came under renewed scrutiny after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year.
The center included a section on Kirk’s group. Turning Point USA, report titled “2024: The Year of Hate and Extremism.” Turning Point USA explained As a “Hard Right Case Study in 2024.”
Kash Patel, who was nominated by President Trump to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has severed ties with the center, which has provided law enforcement with research into hate crimes and domestic far-right ideology and practices.
Patel said the center had become a “partisan smear machine” and accused it of smearing “mainstream America” with its “hate map,” which documents anti-government and hate groups in the United States.
House Republicans hosted a hearing in December centered on the SPLC, saying it was coordinating efforts with former President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration to “target Christian and conservative Americans and strip them of their constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of association.”
