00:00Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to our witnesses. Created in 1971 and headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama.
00:12Created in 1971, headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama. The Southern Poverty Law Center is one of America's leading civil rights groups.
00:19It fights for voting rights throughout the South, economic justice, and criminal justice reform.
00:24Like every major civil rights group in our history, it's been subjected to serious white supremacist violence.
00:30Its leaders have been threatened and attacked since its founding, and SPLC headquarters were firebombed in 1983 by members of
00:39the Ku Klux Klan who were convicted of conspiracy in federal court.
00:43After this attack and escalating racial terror, the SPLC added to its work a focus on the Klan and neo
00:50-Nazi groups and other purveyors of hate violence and white supremacy.
00:53In 1988, the SPLC litigated against the Southern Whites of the Ku Klux Klan, the Southern White Knights of the
01:01Ku Klux Klan, and drove them into bankruptcy, winning a million-dollar damages verdict on behalf of more than 50
01:07peaceful civil rights marchers in Forsyth County, Georgia, who had been savagely attacked and injured by the Klan.
01:15In 2019, it brought a $14 million judgment and won it against the neo-Nazi founder of the Daily Stormer
01:23for orchestrating an anti-Semitic troll storm harassment campaign consisting of more than 700 death threats and vile abuse against
01:34a Jewish woman and her family.
01:35The SPLC has defended the rights of anyone and everyone targeted for hate violence, oppression, and murder.
01:43Today, it's under attack by the Trump administration and MAGA.
01:47Like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the great legislative achievement of the modern civil rights movement, now dismantled by
01:54the Roberts Court,
01:55the SPLC is an enduring institutional beacon of hope for millions of people seeking to create a more perfect union.
02:03The Trump administration is thus naturally trying to tear it down.
02:08I've heard three main arguments for this astonishing crusade.
02:12The first is that the age of racism and white supremacy violence is over in the 21st century, and so
02:19the SPLC's work is unnecessary.
02:21Well, this is plainly ridiculous.
02:23We live in an age of resurgent racial injustice, profound economic inequality, and relentless assault on the right to vote.
02:31Racist violence still permeates our society.
02:34In recent memory, avowed racists and white supremacists have killed 23 people in the El Paso Walmart massacre,
02:4211 people worshiping at the Tree of Life synagogue in the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history,
02:4910 people who were killed shopping for groceries in the Buffalo Supermarket Massacre,
02:55nine worshiping parishioners were gunned down at the Mother Emanuel Church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina,
03:02and eight people were killed at the Atlanta spa shootings.
03:06To name just five examples out of thousands, in 2024 alone, the FBI recorded nearly 12,000 hate crime episodes
03:15in our country.
03:16Just a few weeks ago, three fathers died defending their mosque and 140 children at worship services in San Diego
03:27against two fanatical white supremacist teenagers jacked up on white great replacement theory and far-right neo-Nazi ideology
03:36who took their own lives tragically after the attack.
03:41But here's the second argument they use.
03:43They say, well, even if there's all this violence that we're engulfed in, the Southern Poverty Law Center itself is
03:49responsible for the violence that we see around us.
03:53The basis for this outlandish claim is that for decades, at least since the 1990s,
03:58the SBLC has infiltrated and investigated the Klan, neo-Nazis, and other groups by paying informants who go undercover.
04:07However, the purpose of these operations is obviously to derail and prevent white supremacist hate crimes and actions,
04:14both the kinds of hate crimes and shooting sprees we see all around us,
04:18but even more massive terrorist attacks like the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing,
04:24which took the lives of 168 Americans, many of them children,
04:29who were in a daycare center when the white nationalists unleashed their terrorism on the people of Oklahoma.
04:35In the course of their work to investigate the extreme right,
04:39the SBLC has worked closely with the FBI for decades and turned over to the Bureau voluminous information,
04:46tips and leads from their field sources for further investigation, criminal arrest, and prosecution.
04:52In 2017, the FBI listed the SBLC as one of its partners on its website,
04:59where it remained for eight or nine years before this administration.
05:03There's nothing new about that work,
05:06but now Todd Blanch and the Trump DOJ in Alabama have twisted and corrupted this proud history of cooperation
05:13with law enforcement to bring an 11-count criminal indictment against the SBLC,
05:20claiming that it was defrauding its own donors.
05:24This is amazing, given not only that the SBLC donors and supporters
05:28cherish and prize the group precisely for its ability to get information in its way to stop hate crimes,
05:36but also, incredible, because the FBI itself uses the exact same practices for its own investigative work,
05:43spending in the neighborhood of not $3 or $4 million on undercover informants,
05:48but more than $40 million a year on undercover informants.
05:52There's nothing illegal about that.
05:54SPLC donors are not claiming fraud.
05:58They were proud to support this program.
06:01Even the extremist groups themselves understood they were being infiltrated
06:04and were constantly looking for the traitors, the spies.
06:08Well, my friends, we know what a real fraud looks like.
06:12Consider a fraud called Trump University,
06:16a scam from top to bottom where 9,000 victims joined three different class action lawsuits
06:23to complain about the fact that they were cheated out of thousands of dollars
06:27for a university that existed in name only,
06:30without a real curriculum, without real professors, without an actual campus,
06:35or any way to keep their extravagant and seductive promises to their students.
06:41The thousands of outraged victims were not silent.
06:45They came forward to complain,
06:47and they won a $25 million settlement against Donald Trump and the purveyors of this fraud.
06:54One former instructor at Trump University said it,
06:58quote,
06:58preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.
07:03Another former instructor said the institution was, quote,
07:06a total lie.
07:07That's what real fraud looks like.
07:08What have SPLC's donors done in light of this criminal indictment?
07:13They've not lined up to file class action suits or to denounce the SPLC.
07:18They continue to support the SPLC's works.
07:21Donations to the organization have gone up
07:23since this fraudulent indictment was brought down by the Trump administration.
07:28Well, the final complaint I've heard from members of this committee
07:31speaking on behalf of certain groups who take exception
07:34to being called hate groups by the SPLC.
07:37So they're mad that certain groups that they like are called hate groups.
07:41And I can appreciate why people don't want to be called a hate group.
07:45I don't like a lot of things that are said about me and the groups that I like.
07:50Stephen Miller said the Democrat Party is not a political party.
07:53It's a domestic extremist organization.
07:56I don't like that.
07:57Kristi Noem called Alex Preddy and Renee Good law-abiding citizens shot down by ICE
08:03domestic terrorists.
08:05Donald Trump said that Democratic donors like George Soros and Reid Offman
08:09were funding a conspiracy for domestic terrorists.
08:14Look, under our First Amendment, love and hate exist in the eye of the beholder.
08:19Donald Trump has repeatedly said that January 6th was a day of love
08:22when our police officers were bathed in hugs and kisses
08:26from the Proud Boys and the insurrectionists.
08:28For most of us who lived through that violent insurrection,
08:31it wasn't a day of love.
08:32It was a day of hatred and sickening violence.
08:35But that's the great thing about the First Amendment.
08:37It's up to you.
08:38You can say whatever you want.
08:39If you don't like the fact that someone's called you a hate group,
08:42then you get up and then you rebut them.
08:44You denounce them.
08:46I've heard Chairman Jordan say it a dozen times in our hearings.
08:49And I agree with him.
08:50The proper response to speech you don't like is counter speech,
08:54not government prosecution, not government censorship.
08:59Counterpose honest speech to dishonest speech.
09:02The truth to the lies.
09:03Let the public figure it out.
09:05Whatever happens, I disagree with everything you say,
09:07but I will stand with my life for your right to say it.
09:12We need less vendetta and more Voltaire.
09:15All of this is a disgrace.
09:17When DOJ was founded in 1870, 156 years ago,
09:22it was to protect the newly freed African Americans
09:25against the Ku Klux Klan,
09:27which was rampaging violence throughout the South.
09:31Todd Blanche has capsized DOJ's commitment to the rights of all
09:35and disgraced the department.
09:37He has directed DOJ to savage the SPLC
09:41while he does everything in his power with the president
09:44to aid and abet the right-wing extremists
09:46who commit acts of violence against racial minorities.
09:50Just two weeks after becoming acting AG,
09:53he moved to vacate the criminal convictions
09:56of the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers
09:58for seditious conspiracy.
10:00They were convicted and sentenced to jail for many, many years.
10:05Seditious conspiracy means working to overthrow
10:08the government of the United States.
10:10These were crimes so toxic that President Trump
10:13wouldn't even pardon them when he was pardoning en masse
10:16more than 1,600 other cop-beating, racist January 6 rioters
10:22and insurrectionists.
10:22These are the people that the DOJ now protects.
10:25And now, Todd Blanche wants to create
10:28a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund
10:33to turn the January 6 foot soldiers into mega-millionaires.
10:37And while Blanche was at it, he signed an outrageous superpardon
10:42to give not just Donald Trump, but his entire family
10:44and all their businesses complete and total immunity
10:47from any investigation, audit, lawsuit, or prosecution
10:51by any federal agency for any criminal or civil violation
10:56against the United States up until this point.
10:58And while systematically firing prosecutors and FBI agents
11:02who worked on the January 6 investigation,
11:04the largest criminal probe in American history,
11:08Trump and Blanche are putting January 6 rioters,
11:11violent extremists, and their closest allies
11:14in key positions throughout the DOJ.
11:17Like Jared Wise, who urged rioters to kill police officers
11:20on January 6.
11:22Like Ed Martin, who defended violent cop-beaters,
11:26both as a defense attorney and a federal prosecutor.
11:28He's been given free reign now as DOJ's partnitory,
11:33despite his long history of consorting with neo-Nazis.
11:37Donald Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia,
11:40three years out of law school,
11:41to run the ethics watchdog office of the special counsel
11:44and stood by him after it was revealed
11:46that he admitted to having, quote,
11:49a bit of a Nazi streak in him.
11:53And he wrote that the Martin Luther King holiday
11:55should be tossed into the seventh circle of hell.
12:00The Department of Defense hired Elias Irizarry,
12:03an unqualified, inexperienced, 24-year-old Trump loyalist
12:07and convicted J6 rioter who was pardoned by the president
12:10to work on irregular warfare and counterterrorism.
12:15And so on.
12:17We understand that the extremist swamp
12:21that gave rise to this criminal indictment against the SPLC
12:25is just one more Orwellian attack on the civil rights movement
12:29and one more Kafkaesque prosecution designed to shame
12:32and ensnare the righteous and acquit and absolve the guilty.
12:36It is a tissue of lies that will join the pantheon
12:40of debunked fraudulent prosecutions
12:42that DOJ has been excoriated for by dozens of judges
12:47across the land, appointed by all different presidents.
12:50A few weeks ago, a federal judge in Rhode Island,
12:52Judge McElroy, called the government's submissions
12:55in a case misleading, if not utterly false.
12:57Another judge said that DOJ attorneys
13:00had submitted a patently false allegation to the court.
13:04Another judge rejected administration officials' testimony
13:07as disingenuous, squalid, and dishonorable.
13:10And another court found the administration
13:12had provided a highly misleading,
13:14if not intentionally false, sworn declaration
13:18so disingenuous that the court is left
13:21with little confidence that the United States
13:23can be trusted to tell the truth about anything.
13:26I predict it will not be long
13:29before another federal judge
13:30casts this obscene prosecution to the winds.
13:34I'm only sorry the great name
13:35of the House Judiciary Committee
13:37has now been made an accomplice
13:39to this fraud against the court in the country.
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