Heidi Beirich, an expert on far-right groups, was charged with misuse of donations to pay informants.
Published August 12, 2026
A leading expert on far-right groups in the United States has been indicted by President Donald Trump’s administration for allegedly using donations to secretly pay confidential informants.
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice served an arrest warrant on Heidi Beirich, 59, former intelligence director for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights nonprofit based in Montgomery, Alabama.
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It also issued a superseding indictment that includes Mr. Beirich in an ongoing prosecution against the SPLC, which the Trump administration has accused of defrauding donors. The first charges against the group were filed in April.
Beirich is charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to file false bank returns and conspiracy to commit money laundering, FBI Director Kash Patel said.
“Heidi Beirich has been at the center of our ongoing investigation into SPLC and previously suspected criminal activity,” Patel wrote on social media platform X.
“The SPLC deliberately misled donors who believed their funds were being used to dismantle violent extremist organizations, when in fact some of their donations were instead used to reward extremist leaders.”
But critics have questioned the Trump administration’s motives for filing criminal charges against the SPLC, which has previously worked with the FBI to pursue suspects from far-right hate groups.
The SPLC is often a target of conservative critics who claim the nonprofit is politically biased.
The group’s stated mission is to fight white supremacy and build a multiracial democracy, and it publishes critical of conservative groups such as Turning Point USA, which it describes as a “case study of the far right.”
Beirich’s attorney, Michael Proctor, said his client is innocent and the case was politically motivated. He accused prosecutors of trying to punish his client for his “decades of successful track record of dismantling hate groups.”
“A free and fair society does not use the judicial system to silence political opponents,” he said.
The superseding indictment accuses the SPLC and Beirich of directing more than $4 million in donations to “individuals associated with various violent extremist groups” from 2007 to 2023.
According to the Department of Justice, this practice constitutes fraud.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said Beirich participated in an SPLC effort to “open bank accounts under completely fictitious business names and make payments to individuals for inaccurate reasons.”
The SPLC acknowledged that it had used confidential informants in the past to gather information about hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party, but said the group no longer does so.
The SPLC also said it shared information obtained from informants with local and federal law enforcement agencies.
“Violent extremists did not threaten or disrupt Dr. Beirich’s important work during his time at the SPLC,” Proctor said. “Dr. Beirich will now not be silenced or intimidated by the government’s false and politicized claims.”
