The Southern Poverty Law Center is now under federal indictment — and Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, says the case is only the beginning.
A federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, returned an 11-count indictment charging the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Prosecutors allege that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, some of whom were associated with the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America, the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, and the American Front.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put the charge in stark terms, saying the SPLC was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
Bruner, who recently spoke at the White House, says the Biden DOJ killed an earlier SPLC investigation — a point now echoed by federal prosecutors themselves.
“We’d like to know who at the Biden DOJ killed it. We do know, by the way, that the Biden FBI was partnered with the SPLC on their hate maps, which is just crazy. I mean, they targeted Moms for Liberty, the Family Research Council, Libs of TikTok, Defending Freedom. Just kind of normal, conservative groups. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, and we need to find out more.”
Bruner continued: “You have to use RICO now. It’s hard. They used it to take down the mob, and to say white-collar entities like the Soros network or the Arabella Funding Network are the same as the mob is a tough case to make in court. And yet there’s so much criminality going on. So this SPLC indictment and these charges would seem to be a necessary first step. It gives you the ability to get subpoenas, to kind of shake the trees a little bit, and to keep climbing. That’s what I would do.”
“We’ll see if that’s what Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch does. I do know there are plenty of people in the administration who are concerned about all this money, especially the foreign cash pouring into these networks, like Tides and others. That is a huge scandal. And it needs to be dealt with, whether via Treasury, the FBI, or DOJ. There are several enforcement agencies that can address this.”
Watch the clip above.
