The Southern Poverty Law Center is now facing criminal charges.

Not possible because an indictment has now come up by a grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama.

Just moments ago behind me, acting attorney general Todd Blanche and FBI director,

Cash Patel held a news conference announcing this indictment,

which included bank fraud and wire fraud and some other

serious allegations. This was an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center as an entity,

not specific people. Now, the agency began 55 years ago, John, focusing on racial equity via

legal services and other advocacy of the South. It spread nationwide. The indictment alleges

that the organization paid leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other controversial groups while they

were supposedly in public trying to stop the hatred. According to the indictment, the organization

created bank accounts for fictitious organizations, passed from the Southern Poverty

Law Center to two sham accounts, then to prepaid cards. It was used to shield funds, according to

the DOJ, six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit

money laundering. Now, the SPLC was paying leadership groups that started the

Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. You remember that several years ago. That's where

Heather Hire tragically lost her lives. Somebody was paid $270,000 by the agency over eight years.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche joined the FBI director to make the announcement. Watch.

The SPLC was not dismantling these groups.

It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose

by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.

Now the SPLC, knowing that charges were possible, put out a statement hours ago, said the use of

informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence in 1983.

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