Welcome to the three martini lunch.

Grab a stole next to Greg Carumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review.

Three martini's coming up.

Welcome to the last call of the week for the three martini lunch.

This is our weekly recap of the biggest stories of the week.

And this week, we begin with the Justice Department indicting the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

You'll hear the discussion Jim and I had earlier this week after we hear from acting attorney general Todd Blanche about the alarming ways this fraud

weaved its way into the SPLC's activities.

Today, a few minutes ago in the Middle District of Alabama, a grand jury returned an 11-count

indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with six counts of wire fraud,

four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

According to the charges in the indictment, the SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports

to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups

and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups.

As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups.

It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying

sources to stoke racial hatred. The indictment describes this conduct in detail, but one troubling

example is that the SPLC was paying a member of the leadership group that planned that unite the right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 that resulted in the death of one person and injured dozens more.

And then he went more towards the big picture.

In total, according to the indictment, between 2014 and 2023, SPLC paid at least $3 million

to eight individuals at least.

These individuals were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, United Clans of America, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls

...