00:00Good afternoon. Today, a few minutes ago, in the Middle District of Alabama, a grand jury returned an 11-count
00:09indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one
00:18count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
00:21According to the charges in the indictment, the SPLC is a non-profit entity that purports to fight white supremacy
00:30and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of
00:38dismantling these groups.
00:40As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to
00:49oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.
00:55The indictment describes this conduct in detail, but one troubling example is that the SPLC was paying a member of
01:04the leadership group that planned the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that resulted in the death
01:13of one person and injured dozens more.
01:16This particular person being paid by the SPLC allegedly received approximately $270,000 over the course of eight years.
01:28In total, according to the indictment, between 2014 and 2023, SPLC paid at least $3 million to eight individuals at
01:39least.
01:40These individuals were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations Affiliated Sadistic
01:51Souls Motorcycle Club, the Nationalist Socialist Party of America, Nazis, and the American Front.
Comments