Meidas Touch News: Trump Is Using the Justice Department to Prosecute the People Who Destroyed the KKK
Donald Trump’s Justice Department is criminally prosecuting the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legacy civil rights organization that bankrupted the Ku Klux Klan, forced the integration of Alabama’s state troopers, and has spent fifty-five years fighting the white supremacist groups Trump has spent his political career protecting and emboldening.
The DOJ’s flawed theory of the case is that the SPLC “defrauded” its donors by running a paid informant program to infiltrate white supremacist organizations. Here’s the problem with that logic: that paid informant program is the same one the SPLC used to share intelligence directly with the FBI. It’s the same program that helped them expose assassination plots against SPLC staff and contributed to dismantling some of the most dangerous domestic terror organizations in American history.
The Klan itself was publicly complaining about the SPLC’s informant program in 1981. The DOJ’s case is thinner than the paper it’s written on: the idea that SPLC’s donors were somehow kept in the dark about how their money was being used doesn’t hold up to the most basic investigative scrutiny.
So why is this happening? How could an American administration turn the full weight of the federal government against the organization that did more than any other in America to destroy the KKK in court?
The answer is obvious: the Trump administration has no commitment to civil rights, and has fought tooth and nail to roll them back at every opportunity.
It’s important to take a step back and look at the stark contrast between the SPLC and Donald Trump. On one hand, the SPLC won a $7 million verdict against the United Klans of America, financially destroying one of the nation’s most notorious white supremacist organizations. On the other hand, Trump built the political coalition that would eventually pardon dozens of the movement’s heirs in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection.
The SPLC endured firebombings, assassination plots, and a conspiracy to poison American city water supplies. Meanwhile, Trump told the country there were “very fine people on both sides” at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Even former KKK leader David Duke publicly praised those remarks.
And they weren’t a slip. Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in 2020. He has since pardoned dozens of far-right extremists, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia members, for their roles in January 6. His White House is steered by Stephen Miller, a man with a documented affinity for white nationalist ideology. His administration dropped a longstanding federal prohibition on segregated facilities, a Jim Crow-era safeguard on the books since the 1960s. And his FBI director made a point of publicly celebrating cutting ties with the SPLC last year.
The SPLC is not an isolated target. For more than a year, Trump and his congressional allies have waged a coordinated campaign against progressive nonprofits and civil society organizations, deploying sham congressional hearings, IRS threats, and now the full weight of the Justice Department to intimidate Americans out of civic participation. The administration has redirected counterterrorism resources away from genuine threats and toward domestic political opponents using the Capital Research Center’s database. The SPLC is simply the latest, and most brazen, entry on a long enemies list.
The SPLC was founded in a moment when bombs were going off in Black churches and state-sponsored violence against civil rights demonstrators went unanswered by the justice system. The paid informant program at the center of these charges was built in direct response to that reality, developed in coordination with federal and local law enforcement to do what the government too often wouldn’t: hold white supremacist organizations accountable. That’s exactly what the SPLC told its supporters it would do.
Todd Blanche is under pressure from Trump to deliver wins against political “enemies.” In addition to other civil rights groups and groups that support progressive causes, he has chosen to go after an iconic organization that did more than any other to destroy the KKK in court. The American people deserve to know that. And they deserve to know whose side their government is on.
The Klan tried firebombs. Trump is trying subpoenas. In both cases, the target is the same.
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