The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted on Tuesday on federal fraud charges, alleging it improperly paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups without disclosing the payments to donors, acting attorney general Todd Blanche said.
The center’s CEO Bryan Fair said the payments went to confidential informants in order to monitor threats of violence from the extremist groups – and that the information the center received was frequently shared with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The information gathered by the informants helped save lives, Fair said on Tuesday.
“We are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC,” Fair said.
The Justice Department alleged that the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the same extremism that it claimed to be fighting. The indictment says payments of at least $3m went to informants affiliated with the…
Set up a “Google Alert” for your own name to monitor if your personal details appear on public forums or paste-sites associated with recent data breaches.