Washington, D.C. — The Southern Poverty Law Center announced today that Trump’s Justice Department is preparing to criminally prosecute the organization over its past use of paid informants to infiltrate white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC used informants to protect its own staff from violence and to share intelligence with federal law enforcement, including the FBI. This is what Trump’s DOJ has decided to criminalize.
Parker Thayer, an “investigative researcher” at Capital Research Center, the right-wing targeting operation that feeds dossiers on progressive nonprofits directly to the White House and House Republicans, responded to the news on social media by writing: “Words can’t express how much they deserve this.”
Capital Research Center has spent years cataloguing the SPLC as a target for federal scrutiny, and its president personally briefs senior White House officials on nonprofits and their vulnerabilities. Now the federal government is delivering.
In response, Congressional Integrity Project Senior Advisor Kyle Herrig released the following statement:
“This outrageous and baseless attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center is part and parcel of Donald Trump’s relentless crusade against legacy civil rights organizations, and the concept of civil rights itself. In their work, the SPLC used informants to take on the Ku Klux Klan and keep its staff alive. They shared what they learned with the FBI. That’s exactly what they’re supposed to do. And yet, right-wing ‘research’ shops like the Capital Research Center have spent years painting a target on the SPLC’s back, feeding oppo to Congress and walking files to the White House. And right on cue, their staff is celebrating online while Trump’s Justice Department does their bidding. Everyone involved in this administration’s unprecedented lawfare should be held accountable for their role in turning the federal government into a weapon against civil society.”
###