The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reimbursed Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members for cross-burnings, federal officials said on Tuesday.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a superseding indictment that the SPLC used their donors’ money “to fund the leaders and organizations of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the National Alliance.”
“The SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website,” the DOJ said in Tuesday’s superseding indictment.
The department goes on to allege that $4.1 million worth of tax-exempt funds were used to pay these individuals whose activities even included recruiting new members and buying materials for cross burnings and KKK robes and hoods.
The far-left organization is still facing 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and money laundering conspiracy, all charges which were filed in April.
The superseding indictment filed in federal court in Montgomery, Alabama, describes how the Southern Poverty Law Center paid informants using donor funds raised on the promise of “exposing hate and injustice” and “fighting discrimination.”
Two Klan members, identified in the document as F-31 and F-32, came to the far-left organization in 2010 in fear for their safety and wanting to leave the KKK, the DOJ’s indictment says.
Instead of assisting them in leaving the hate group, prosecutors allege the two individuals were paid $1,200 per month — plus expenses — through a shell company called Rare Books Warehouse to stay embedded within the Klan.
Some of that money was then used to recruit new KKK members and make the Klan’s white robes, the indictment notes, adding that other expenses the two individuals were reimbursed for included all the costs “incurred for cross-burning events, to include the wood and fuel used.”
The SPLC also footed the bill for “extremist group rallies,” creating new chapters of the hate groups, and disseminating “racist paraphernalia,” as well as other “extremist literature,” the DOJ claims.
Among the SPLC’s informants were a Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and a leader of a private chat group that helped organize the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to the indictment.
As Breitbart News reported, the DOJ’s initial filing contends that 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 also paid a member of the National Alliance over $1 million to be an informant and engage in activities such as breaking into the group’s headquarters to steal documents which the member later handed over to the far-left organization.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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