The SPLC spent decades labeling conservative churches and nonprofits as hate groups alongside the KKK.
Now a federal indictment reveals the SPLC was secretly paying KKK leaders the whole time.
What just came out about Biden's DOJ explains why nobody stopped it.
Southern Poverty Law Center Indicted for Secretly Paying KKK Leaders With Donor Money
A federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, hit the Southern Poverty Law Center with 11 criminal counts last month – wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The SPLC spent decades raising money by telling donors it was dismantling white supremacist groups.
It was secretly paying the leaders of those same groups more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche didn't mince words: the SPLC was "manufacturing racism to justify its existence."
The indictment details how the SPLC ran a covert network of informants inside groups including the KKK, the Aryan Nations, and the National Socialist Party of America – then opened bank accounts under fictitious names like "Fox Photography" and "Rare Books Warehouse" to hide where the donor money was going.
One SPLC informant was paid more than $1 million while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
Another was paid $270,000 over eight years – and was a member of the leadership group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Donors had no idea any of this was happening.
Biden DOJ Gave SPLC Access to FBI Data While the KKK Payments Were Happening
Biden's former Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta didn't go into hiding when the indictment dropped.
She went on camera instead – at a virtual press conference hosted by Norm Eisen's Democracy Defenders Fund – and confirmed everything the indictment alleged, then tried to spin it as a defense.
Gupta told the assembled left-wing legal team that the SPLC's informant program "regularly shared information with federal law enforcement," and added that she personally had "been the beneficiary" of that intelligence as Biden's number three at the Justice Department.
Biden's DOJ knew the SPLC was paying informants inside violent racist groups – and kept the relationship running anyway.
Then Norm Eisen stepped in with what he apparently believed was the legal kill shot.
Eisen argued that the indictment "does not hold water" because the SPLC's informant payments were "known to the DOJ, and the FBI."
His defense: federal agency awareness of a fraud scheme makes the fraud legal.
The indictment dismantles that argument in black and white – donors were defrauded through false representations about how their money would be used, and the fictitious bank accounts existed specifically to hide the payments from the people writing the checks.
Government knowledge of a scheme does not erase the crime against the donors.
Jim Jordan Is Now Demanding Documents on How Deep the Biden DOJ and SPLC Partnership Went
Jim Jordan's House Judiciary Committee has been investigating the Biden DOJ's SPLC relationship for months, and documents obtained by America First Legal show how thoroughly the partnership was embedded.
The Biden DOJ didn't just tolerate the SPLC – it gave the organization operational access to federal law enforcement.
SPLC employees trained federal prosecutors.
The SPLC received early, embargoed access to FBI hate crime data before public release.
The Civil Rights Division held regular quarterly meetings that included SPLC alongside other radical left-wing organizations.
At a 2023 DOJ Hate Crimes Symposium, an SPLC analyst addressed more than 100 federal prosecutors – and used the platform to falsely link a conservative lawsuit against Target to bomb threats that his own cited article confirmed came from left-wing activists.
Kash Patel severed all FBI ties with the SPLC in October, calling it a "partisan smear machine."
Jordan's conclusion was direct: Merrick Garland's DOJ "colluded with the radical, left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center on matters relating to federal civil rights enforcement" – while the SPLC was secretly funneling donor money to the racist groups it claimed to be destroying.
That arrangement was no accident.
The SPLC could do things the federal government legally couldn't – run informants inside private organizations, compile targeting lists of conservative groups, and feed that intelligence directly to the DOJ without a warrant, a court order, or a paper trail Congress could subpoena.
Acting AG Blanche confirmed the investigation into the SPLC started years ago and was shut down during Biden's tenure.
The Trump DOJ inherited it, revived it, and four months later produced an 11-count federal indictment.
Biden's team didn't just know about the SPLC's KKK payments.
They killed the investigation that would have exposed them – then embedded themselves so deeply inside the organization that a senior official felt comfortable going on camera to declare the whole thing legal.
The federal indictment says otherwise.
Sources:
- Brianna Lyman, "Biden DOJ Was In Cahoots With SPLC As It Funded Extremist Groups, Former Official Admits," The Federalist, May 7, 2026.
- "Federal Grand Jury Charges Southern Poverty Law Center for Wire Fraud, False Statements, and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering," U.S. Department of Justice, April 21, 2026.
- "SPLC's Legal Woes Grow as Jim Jordan Fires Latest Salvo at Left-Wing Group," Fox News, April 2026.
- "Chairman Jordan Requests Documents about Southern Poverty Law Center Paying Extremists," House Judiciary Committee, April 2026.
- M.D. Kittle, "Norm Eisen Frets DOJ Indictment Jeopardizes People on SPLC's Hate List and Payroll," The Federalist, April 29, 2026.
