The Southern Poverty Law Center has unleashed a fiery response to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, accusing him of lying in a Fox News segment and demanding a retraction.
Lawyers for the Alabama-based nonprofit claim that Blanche falsely said it did not share findings from its extremist informant network with law enforcement.
“The Department of Justice is well aware that the SPLC provided helpful information, through the use of its confidential informants, to law enforcement,” the group said in a federal court filing on Tuesday. “The Department of Justice also knows that these confidential informants helped law enforcement put violent extremists in jail.”
The SPLC went on to accuse Blanche of making an unfair “prejudicial” statement that could taint the jury pool and compromise the group’s right to a fair trial.
A grand jury returned an indictment against SPLC on April 21, charging it with wire fraud and bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and false statements to banks. The charges stem from the millions that have flowed through its informant network, which includes those embedded in hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations.
The government alleges that the SPLC misled donors about how their money would be used and paid more than $3 million to people linked to violent extremist groups, bolstering them instead of exposing offending members. Blanche, who is auditioning to become the permanent attorney general, spoke to that effect on Fox News.
“There’s no information that we have that suggests that the money they were paying to these informants and these members of these organizations, they then turned around and shared what they learned with law enforcement,” Blanche said.
The SPLC says it shares its informants’ findings with law enforcement. It claims to have provided a federal judge with receipts to support this.
In its filing, the SPLC writes that it has also pleaded with the DOJ to set the record straight. It is also suggested that federal prosecutors may have fed misinformation to the grand jury that returned an indictment against it.
“At one moment, they are appreciating our work in destroying the Klan, and now, they are saying the SPLC funded and promoted the Klan,” SPLC’s interim CEO Bryan Fair said on Tuesday. “The informant program was successful in accomplishing its purposes: Threats and attacks were prevented, criminal activity was stopped, and information was gathered to dismantle the efforts of hate and extremist groups. There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. A spokeswoman told Bloomberg Law that “these issues will all be litigated in court and the government remains confident in its case.”
The SPLC’s latest filing in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama ordered the DOJ to “retract the false and unfairly prejudicial statement” and “refrain from making any further false or misleading statements about the allegations in the indictment.”
The SPLC claims that it sent a letter to the DOJ on Wednesday requesting that acting U.S. Attorney Kevin Davidson “retract or correct the false statement” made by Blanche.
