Washington, D.C. — The Trump Justice Department’s fraud case against the Southern Poverty Law Center is unraveling, with new court filings showing the FBI knew about and benefited from the very informant program it is now prosecuting as a crime. Meanwhile, the Trump Treasury Department is moving to overhaul Form 990 in ways that threaten donor privacy and squeeze the fiscal sponsorship structures that civil society organizations rely on. And right-wing operatives are going after the Ford Foundation after it committed $60 million to defend voting rights and democratic institutions.
The DOJ Knew About the SPLC’s Informants. It Indicted Them Anyway.
A key part of the Trump administration’s fraud case against the Southern Poverty Law Center rests on Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s claim that federal law enforcement had no knowledge of the group’s paid informant program. New court filings demolish that claim. The SPLC shared intelligence from that program with the FBI for nearly a decade. Before the 2017 Charlottesville rally, the SPLC sent the FBI a 45-page briefing drawn from informant intelligence, including information about attendees’ weapons. A 2019 tip from the program led to the FBI’s arrest of a white supremacist who had discussed attacking a synagogue and an LGBTQ+ bar. Blanche went on television and told the country the government had “no information” that the SPLC had shared intelligence with law enforcement. The SPLC has now asked a federal court to order him to issue a retraction. Legal experts say the prosecution faces steep obstacles, since the administration’s theory requires pretending the SPLC’s mission was a secret. It was not.
The IRS Form 990 Overhaul Is a First Amendment Fight Waiting to Happen
The Trump Treasury Department’s proposed revisions to Form 990 would force new disclosure obligations onto nonprofits, with particular focus on fiscal sponsorship structures and government funding reporting. Legal experts are warning that, in the context of the SPLC indictment, the proposed changes look less like a transparency push and more like a roadmap for selective enforcement against organizations whose politics the administration dislikes. The Supreme Court has previously refused to compel nonprofits to hand over donor lists, and any new public disclosure requirements will face similar constitutional hurdles. But that won’t stop right-wing groups like Capital Research Center from coordinating with the White House on their strategy to cripple nonprofits and civil society organizations they disagree with.
The Right Is Attacking the Ford Foundation for Defending Democracy
Right-wing outlets are intentionally misrepresenting the Ford Foundation’s $60 million democracy investment as a partisan operation, but the record says otherwise. The grants went to organizations drawing from both parties and no party, funding civic participation, voter protection, and election administration work in communities across the country. Among the recipients is Pillars of the Community, co-chaired by prominent Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg and his longtime Democratic courtroom adversary Bob Bauer, who joined forces specifically to protect election integrity. Attacking the Ford Foundation for funding nonpartisan voter protection while the Trump administration criminally prosecutes civil rights organizations and rewrites IRS rules to cut off nonprofit funding is incoherent partisanship at its worst. This is a coordinated effort to delegitimize any institution willing to stand up for democracy at the very moment this administration is working hardest to undermine it.
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