Southern Poverty Law Center Demands DOJ Retract ‘False’ Comments

The Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday said the Justice Department falsely claimed it didn’t have information indicating the civil rights group shared findings from informants at the center of fraud charges against the organization.

The alleged “false statements” were made by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in an April 21 Fox News interview. Blanche’s appeared the same day DOJ announced an 11-count indictment against SPLC charging the organization with wire fraud, false statements to federally insured banks, and money laundering tied to payments to informants of extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan.

Blanche said in the interview, “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.”

This statement was false, SPLC said in its filing requesting the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama issue an order directing 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.”

Attorneys for SPLC said the organization provided the US attorney’s office in Montgomery with evidence shortly before the indictment showing the organization shared findings from its informants with law enforcement. The organization said it notified DOJ in an April 22 letter that Blanche made a false statement and requested that acting US Attorney Kevin Davidson “retract or correct the false statement.”

“The government has chosen to do neither,” SPLC said Tuesday. “As such, this Court should require the government to set the record straight.”

In response to the filing, DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre reiterated the department’s earlier statement on the indictment and said DOJ has additional evidence it hasn’t yet presented to a grand jury.

“These issues will all be litigated in court and the government remains confident in its case,” Baldassarre said in an email.

SPLC’s filing is the latest escalation in its legal battle with DOJ, which claims the organization misled donors and banks by concealing payments made to individuals affiliated with the Klan, National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nations, and other extremist groups.

Blanche said in a press conference announcing the charges that SPLC was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” rather than using the information from informants to help dismantle the extremist groups.

SPLC and its supporters have characterized the indictment, particularly the wire fraud and money laundering charges, as another example of politicized weaponization of DOJ under President Donald Trump’s second term.

Some lawyers have predicted that the false statement counts are more likely to survive at trial. Several defense lawyers and former white-collar prosecutors have argued that the indictment’s omission of an intent to influence a financial institution could lead a judge to dismiss the case or demand transcripts of the typically-secretive grand jury proceedings.

SPLC is represented by prominent defense lawyer Abbe Lowell, along with attorneys at Kropf Moseley Schmitt PLLC and Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP.

The case is USA v. Southern Poverty Law Center, Inc., M.D. Ala., No. 2:26-cr-00139, 4/28/26.