WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center told a federal judge Tuesday that criminal charges against their organization represent a politically motivated prosecution that should be thrown out, claiming the case stems from a coordinated effort to target President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries.
The civil rights organization based in Alabama faces fraud and money laundering allegations filed in April, with prosecutors claiming the group deceived contributors by compensating informants within white supremacist and extremist organizations to gather intelligence about their operations.
Defense attorneys for the SPLC previously contended that law enforcement has been aware for years that the organization compensated informants to monitor hate group activities. They also pointed out that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made inaccurate statements during a press conference and media appearances when he claimed the organization withheld information gathered from informants from law enforcement agencies. Blanche later seemed to modify his position in a television appearance, acknowledging the SPLC had “selectively” provided information to law enforcement throughout the years.
In Tuesday’s dismissal motion, the organization’s legal team built upon these arguments, describing the prosecution as the “culmination of a top-down, retributive campaign” where Trump pressured the Justice Department “to go after those individuals and groups he deemed his political enemies, including the SPLC.”
The filing comes amid other controversial prosecutions that have sparked worries about the Justice Department being used as a tool against Trump’s critics. The motion attempts to connect the SPLC case with the human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which a judge dismissed Friday on similar vindictive prosecution grounds, calling it an “abuse of prosecuting power.”
The SPLC has explained that its discontinued informant compensation program was created to gather crucial intelligence about hate group activities to help protect potential targets. While an earlier federal probe into these practices ended without charges, the current motion portrays the Justice Department as pursuing the matter with renewed and hasty determination.
According to the defense filing, the department moved forward with the indictment without interviewing any current SPLC staff members and didn’t request documents from the organization until after informing defense counsel that criminal charges would be filed. When defense lawyers requested a meeting hoping to prevent the indictment, Justice Department officials told them the charging decision had already been finalized, the motion reveals.
“These procedural irregularities show that the charges against the SPLC were a foregone conclusion based on prosecutorial vindictiveness — driven by the White House and FBI leadership’s retribution campaign — rather than the result of a good faith examination of the evidence,” the motion states, describing the indictment as “premised on conclusory accusations but devoid of provable facts or a proper statement of the law.”
The motion also references whistleblower reports that alleged senior Justice Department officials rushed the indictment despite internal doubts about the case’s merit and evidence quality.
“For weeks, we have been arguing against these false allegations levied against the SPLC — an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive,” Bryan Fair, the interim president and CEO of SPLC, said in a statement. “The government can’t prosecute the SPLC as payback for its protected speech — it violates basic constitutional rights.”
Established in 1971 as a civil rights organization, the SPLC has spent decades using legal action to combat white supremacist organizations. The group also monitors the activities and locations of domestic extremists. However, this work has made it a frequent target among Republicans who view it as excessively liberal and partisan.
The organization gained renewed scrutiny last year following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, as the SPLC had featured a section about the organization Kirk established and headed, Turning Point USA, in a publication called “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024.”
FBI Director Kash Patel announced in October that the bureau would end its relationship with the SPLC, characterizing it as a “partisan smear machine” and accusing it of defaming “mainstream Americans” through its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups across the United States.
The defense motion argues that “animus” from high-ranking administration officials influenced the indictment.
Among the examples cited, the motion includes Trump’s own remarks calling the SPLC “a total scam run by the Democrats,” along with a media interview where Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s top civil rights official, described the indictment as “personal” to her because she had “a lot of journalist friends … and groups that I’ve represented who have been targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
