On Friday, former President Trump suggested that the 2020 election should be expunged if allegations against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) regarding fraudulent payments totaling $3 million to white supremacist groups are proven true.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center, a significant political deception in American history, stands accused of FRAUD,” Trump declared in a pointed post on Truth Social.
He went on to label the situation as “another Democrat Hoax,” comparing it to ActBlue and other controversies.
Trump further argued that if the SPLC is found guilty of crimes such as wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the results of the 2020 election—which he lost to Joe Biden—should be nullified.
“If these charges are accurate, the 2020 Presidential Election should be erased from history and rendered null and void,” he asserted.
The SPLC faced indictment on Tuesday, with prosecutors alleging that $3 million in donations was covertly channeled to extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, the National Socialist Movement, United Klans of America, and Unite the Right between 2014 and 2023.
The SPLC prides itself on fighting white supremacy and in the 1980s, the organization started to operate a covert network of informants who were either linked with, or had infiltrated violent extremist groups.
The indictment alleges that those informants, known as field sources or Fs, were paid in a “clandestine manner,” all while donors continued to pump money into the organization under the belief funds would be used to “dismantle” such organizations.
One leader of the 2017 Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Va., received more than $270,000 over eight years. That person wasn’t identified in the indictment.
They were part of an online leadership group that planned the rally and helped coordinate transport for several others.
Meanwhile, an informant, identified as F-9, was allegedly paid more than $1 million by the SPLC – and stole 25 boxes of documents belonging to the neo-Nazi group National Alliance, according to the indictment.
Another person was allegedly paid $6,000 by the SPLC to falsely take responsibility for the theft.
A former director of the Aryan Nations, who also was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was featured in the SPLC’s “Extremist Files” — despite getting paid $70,000 between 2014 and 2016, the court docs claim.
The organization is accused of secretly paying $19,000 to an informant – a convicted felon for cross burning – between 2016 and 2019.
SPLC CEO Bryan Fair claimed the group was being targeted for “prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”
But, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters the organization was not “dismantling these groups.”
“It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” he said.
“There is nothing political about this indictment or this investigation.”
Last October, FBI director Kash Patel severed the agency’s relationship with the SPLC.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” he wrote on X at the time.
“Their so-called ‘hate map’ has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence. That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership.”
