The Media’s Herculean Effort to Obscure the Details of the SPLC Indictment

By Becket Adams

Sunday, April 26, 2026

 

It is possible to hold these two seemingly opposing positions at the same time: that the Justice Department’s case against the Southern Poverty Law Center may be legally questionable, and that the underlying charges are eminently scandalous and newsworthy.

 

Yet, regarding the strength of the DOJ’s case, it does not speak well of the SPLC’s claimed innocence that news organizations have responded to Washington’s claims with the sort of full-court public relations effort that conspicuously ignores or mischaracterizes the most damning allegations.

 

It suggests a lack of confidence.

 

For context — because you’ll be hard-pressed to find it anywhere but in conservative media — the Justice Department last week announced an eleven-count indictment against the SPLC, charging the group with wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

 

More specifically, the SPLC stands accused of defrauding donors by secretly paying racists to keep on being racist while it claimed in fundraising drives that it needs yet more money to fight racists. Groups that benefited from this alleged arrangement included the Ku Klux Klan, the National Socialist Party of America, and a member of the group that helped organize the fatal 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., an event that former President Joe Biden would later claim inspired him to run for president.

 

It’s all deeply embarrassing for the SPLC, if not outright criminal.

 

Yet you’d hardly know this from following mainstream press coverage. You’d know mostly that a supposedly noble and esteemed anti-racist group is tied up somehow in Trump administration chicanery.

 

“The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted for paying sources to infiltrate hate groups, a tactic federal agencies have used for decades,” reported USA Today.

 

Not even close.

 

“Justice Dept. Charges Prominent Civil Rights Group With Financial Crimes,” reported the New York Times, experimenting with the idea of a headline that says nothing at all.

 

“Financial crimes” is narrowly true, but one can’t help but wonder why the paper chose to omit the objectively newsworthy allegation that the anti-hate group bankrolled Klan members and the like.

 

“The Southern Poverty Law Center was formed in 1971 in Alabama and is best known for investigating groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations,” the Times reported. “In recent years, Republicans have accused the group of unfairly targeting conservative and Christian organizations, labeling them as extremists.”

 

Wink, wink.

 

Then there’s this doozy from CBS News: “Justice Department charges Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud over investigations into extremist groups, Blanche says.”

 

“The SPLC is a nonprofit that tracks white supremacist and other hate groups across the U.S. and has been a frequent target of President Trump’s allies,” the report is careful to note. “It is best known for its work investigating the Ku Klux Klan.”

 

Oh, please.

 

At the very least, these people should admit the alleged SPLC scheme was ingeniously lucrative.

 

In 2016, the year before the Unite the Right rally, the SPLC’s total contributions and public support stood at about $50 million. By October 2017, after the rally, revenues soared to approximately $133 million.

 

Not a bad return on an investment in which the SPLC reportedly paid about $270,000 to a source who “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned” the rally, “attended the event at the direction of the SPLC,” “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC,” and “helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.” It’s also worth noting that the SPLC allegedly continued to pay its Unite the Right source six years after the Charlottesville event.

 

In total, the federal indictment lists roughly $3 million in payouts, not just to the sources listed above, but also: a former “Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America,” a Klan member who was the spouse of “an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan,” a person who “led the National Socialist Party of America” and “was the former director of a faction of the Aryan Nations,” and the “reported National President of American Front,” who was “a convicted federal felon for his participation in a cross burning.”

 

These aren’t low-level guys. They are in leadership roles, meaning the SPLC allegedly bankrolled high-ranking leaders in the hate groups it purports to oppose, keeping them financially afloat in the otherwise profitless profession of hating blacks, Jews, Catholics, and others.

 

The SPLC alleges it was merely paying “informants.” The group also said it has since discontinued the practice of using “informants,” which doesn’t exactly scream “there’s no there there.”

 

The DOJ’s case against the SPLC may or may not be too thin to survive (some of my colleagues certainly have doubts), and charges alone don’t prove guilt. You can indict a ham sandwich, after all.

 

Yet whether the charges are overblown or not, it shouldn’t prevent newsrooms from simply reporting the news, but it has been like pulling teeth trying to find the facts of this story. Readers must wade through a moat of throat-clearing, euphemisms, and outright misdirection in the coverage — particularly the ledes and headlines — to get to the “what” of “what has the SPLC been accused of?”

 

Then again, perhaps the hemming and hawing is understandable. For all the decades that these newsrooms have spent promoting the SPLC as the authority on racism and “hate,” they never meant it like that.