The Southern Poverty Law Center revealed Tuesday that it’s under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for previously using paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.
The nonprofit public interest group announced that the Trump administration appears to be preparing a case against the organization or some of its employees.
“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.
Fair said that the SPLC had used informants to monitor the threat of violence inside extremist organizations, and had frequently shared its findings with local and federal law enforcement.
“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”
Fair said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”
The Montgomery-based SPLC was founded in 1971 in order to combat white supremacist groups after the civil rights movement. Yet the nonprofit’s purview has been nationally perceived (at least on the right) as less and less acceptable in the decades since. Conservative politicians and personalities have railed against the advocacy group, claiming that its work—which includes tracking extremist groups, promoting tolerance, and kneecapping bigotry through litigation—is inherently partisan and overly leftist.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced last year that his agency would sever ties with the SPLC, ending a longstanding research arrangement between the nonprofit and the federal government.
The investigation has reignited concerns that Donald Trump is trying to weaponize the Justice Department during his second term, morphing the agency into his personal law firm in order to harm or attack his dissidents and critics.