Latest Southern Poverty Law Center Indictment Reveals FBI-Like Tactics

Trying to convince Americans that white supremacy/rightwing extremism pose a dire threat to the nation costs a lot of money, involves a lot of shady people, and requires a lot of subterfuge.

Apparently the Southern Poverty Law Center isn’t just the most influential and well-funded (for now) AstroTurfed “racial justice” racket in the country, it’s a great place to meet one’s potential soulmate.

According to a bombshell report in the New York Post this week, a top SPLC official hooked up with one of the organization’s “sources” who was tied to a neo-Nazi group that the SPLC claimed to “monitor” and used to raise donations. The unidentified source—essentially an informant—earned $1.2 million from the SPLC over a 20-year period; at least $140,000 of that donor money ended up in a joint account held by the source and Heidi Beirich, the SPLC’s intelligence director from 2012 to 2019.

The lovebirds shared a home and two bank accounts at the same time “the unnamed informant was also raising money for the National Alliance and helping to ‘carry out its extremist activities,’” the Post reported.

Beirich was front and center in promoting the alleged scourge of “black hate” during her tenure at the SPLC. (She was ousted during an organizational shakeup; Beirich then co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which offered assistance to the January 6 Select Committee related to the “extremism” posed by groups such as the Proud Boys.)

The juicy tidbits related to the Beirich/neo-Nazi coupling were disclosed in a superseding federal indictment—the Department of Justice first brought charges against the SPLC in April—handed down earlier this month in the middle district of Alabama, where the nonprofit is based. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the initial set of charges, accusing the SPLC of opening fake entities that acted as conduits to funnel donor funds to the “sources,” who in turn helped bolster the group’s claims of a persistent “white supremacy” threat in the country. “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 indictment alleged.

But the latest indictment reveals even more details as to how the SPLC—whose work is frequently cited in the media, Congressional reports, and even federal indictments as the “expert” in all things race-related—uses paid informants to ratchet up its bogus warnings about white supremacy and stoke fear among the public. For example, the SPLC currently claims there are 152 active “white supremacy” groups and 1,263 active “hate” groups, whatever that means, in America right now.

The ‘Hard Right’ Responsible for One of the Most Unsafe Years Ever, Says SPLC

The sources/informants, however, are key in propping up the SPLC’s nearly $1 billion race-baiting operation, which in reality is nothing more than a vile smear campaign against the political Right and President Trump in particular.

The year 2025, according to the SPLC’s annual report on “hate and extremism,” was one of the worst years on record. “Ultimately, 2025 was the year that the hard right powerfully brought its agenda to life through our institutions at the expense of Black and Brown people, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, families with low incomes and everyone who benefits from an inclusive democracy,” the group’s director, Rachel Carroll Rivas, wrote in a June 3 post. “2025 was a turbulent year marked by injustice, social upheaval and stark new threats from a hard-right movement rapidly establishing its power across institutions. The hard right effectively seized the power of government as a messenger for extremist rhetoric and a tool to dictate policies affecting the everyday lives of millions of people.”

The “stark new threats” appear to be coming from inside the house, according to the latest indictment. In addition to the Beirich/neo-Nazi affair, the indictment describes the activity of eight SPLC informants, some of whom received six-figure payouts via the fake entities created by the SPLC to conceal the compensation.

For example:

• The SPLC source recruited by an unnamed SPLC employee to instigate the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville received more than $300,000 in donor money between 2014 and 2023. The individual, identified as “F-37”—the SPLC used the letter “F” to denote “field” source (LOL) and added a number—led rally leadership chats, promoted the event extensively on social media, and drove participants to the August 2017 protest. The event resulted in a firestorm of controversy for the Trump administration and produced one of the most infamous, and inaccurate, quotes of the president’s first term in office—the “very fine people on both sides” quip still cherry-picked to this day to suggest the president supported the more violent protesters who clashed with police and counter protesters over that fateful weekend. The public may never know whether “F-37” was directly involved in fueling any of the violence, which resulted in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

• Two sources, F-30 (a member of both the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations) and F-42 (former chairman of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization) were paid by the SPLC to add to their ranks of racists so SPLC could flag the groups on its “Extremist File” to use as fundraising tools. F-30, paid at least $70,000, “publish[ed] racist and extremist material for the purpose of recruiting new members, both inside and outside prison, and create racist paraphernalia to sell at rallies to raise more money for his extremist organization.” (In a humorous twist, F-30 complained that the SPLC’s harsh description of his group scared off potential members so the SPLC toned down the language.) F-42 received $155,000 between 2016 and 2023.

• When two members of the Ku Klux Klan sought help from the SPLC to exit the group, SPLC officials instead encouraged the pair to remain in the movement. Not only did they receive monthly compensation, the sources, identified as F-31 and F-32, were reimbursed for purchasing material to make KKK garments and “for all expenses incurred for cross-burning events to include the wood and fuel used.”

Patel put it in stark terms:

Instigators, Not Informants

Much of this is reminiscent of tactics used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in recent years to substantiate former FBI Director Chris Wray’s unsubstantiated warnings about “domestic violent extremism,” i.e., Trump supporters. As I covered for years, the FBI used several informants and at least three undercover FBI agents to concoct the Whitmer fednapping hoax (a thorough report by yours truly here) to make it appear that “white supremacist” supporters of Donald Trump plotted to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer right before the 2020 presidential election.

At least three informants were paid handsomely (in cash, per FBI policy) for luring the men into the trap. The main informant, Dan Chappel, received at least $60,000 in cash and gifts over a ten-month period; perhaps he can hook up with the SPLC to keep his profitable gig going?

Court proceedings in the trials of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters related to the events of January 6 revealed the presence of numerous FBI informants in each group before and on that day. FBI informants were caught doing the same thing as SPLC informants; talking smack in group chats, organizing and attending rallies, and participating in the January 6 protest.

All told, the collaboration between the government and nonprofits such as SPLC represent a massive campaign of deception to drastically inflate the danger of “white supremacy” and attach the imaginary threat to Trump and the MAGA movement as a whole. (Last year, Patel formally cut ties between the FBI and SPLC, accurately calling it a “partisan smear machine.”) And while the SPLC now insists it is the victim of a “vindictive” prosecution, the reality is that the SPLC is the vindictive party, shamefully stoking the flames of racial and political discord to boost its bottom line.

Nothing more hateful than that.