House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is pressing the Southern Poverty Law Center to hand over internal records following a federal indictment that accuses the group of financial crimes, according to a letter sent this week.
The demand comes after the Department of Justice charged the organization with counts including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Jordan’s letter, addressed to SPLC president Bryan Fair, seeks communications and financial documents spanning several years. The committee says it is looking into possible coordination between the group and the Biden administration, and how that may have intersected with federal law enforcement.
The letter outlines allegations from the indictment that the SPLC directed roughly $3 million in donor funds to individuals linked to extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, as well as organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It also raises questions about how those payments were handled.
“At no point did the SPLC inform its donors that their charitable donations might be used to pay leaders of violent hate groups. To conceal the source of these payments, the SPLC allegedly opened bank accounts under the name of various fictitious entities and transferred funds from those accounts to their informants.”
Citing the indictment further, Jordan wrote that the entities used in the alleged scheme “were never incorporated, had no bona fide employees, and conducted no actual business.” He added, “Rather, their sole purpose was to enable the SPLC ‘as if the [informants] were receiving money from the fictitious entities rather than receiving donated funds from the SPLC to conduct financial transactions that made it appear.’”
Jordan said the committee has already identified instances of cooperation between the SPLC and federal agencies during the Biden-Harris administration. That includes documents within the FBI that referenced SPLC material.
“In addition, other publicly available documents revealed how the Justice Department partnered closely with the SPLC during the Biden-Harris Administration, including scheduling regular meetings, giving the SPLC early access to federal law-enforcement data, and allowing SPLC employees to train federal prosecutors.11 The new information about the SPLC alleged in the indictment only raises further questions.”
The committee is requesting documents dating back to January 2017, including communications involving SPLC employees and paid “field sources,” as well as records tied to entities such as the Center Investigative Agency, Fox Photography, Tech Writers Group, and Rare Books Warehouse. It also seeks correspondence between SPLC staff and officials at the DOJ, FBI, and other executive agencies during Biden’s time in office.
The SPLC has been given a deadline of 5 pm on April 30 to comply.
