WASHINGTON—White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday said the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a “criminal organization,” according to a grand jury indictment, and that the allegations the Department of Justice (DOJ) has brought against it should be front-page news nationwide.
Leavitt responded to Breitbart News’s question about the White House’s reaction to the SPLC indictment and the DOJ’s allegations.
“Yeah, I saw the indictment yesterday. I saw the acting attorney general and FBI director do a press conference on it. It was quite shocking to me to learn of the egregious violations of the law the Southern Poverty Law Center was committing,” Leavitt said.
“And I think that’s a story that should be on the front page of every newspaper in this country because they’ve obviously been duping their supporters and the American taxpayers for far too long,” she added. “It’s a criminal organization, clearly, and that’s not our DOJ saying that, or Todd Blanche saying that, that’s a grand jury indictment saying that.”
As Breitbart News noted, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that an Alabama grand jury indicted the SPLC “with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering” on Tuesday.
A DOJ press release reads:
According to the indictment starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent and extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction. Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.
The DOJ contends the SPLC funneled over $3 million to individuals associated with the Ku Klux Klan, Unite the Right, Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, the National Socialist Party of America — which is America’s Nazi Party — and others associated with various extremist groups between 2014 and 2023.
“The SPLC allegedly engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement shared via X.
“They lied to their donors, vowing to dismantle violent extremist groups, and actually turned around and paid the leaders of these very extremist groups – even utilizing the funds to have these groups facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes,” he added.
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