Hate Crime

DAVID MARCUS: The law comes for Southern Poverty Law Center's ideological vigilantes

The alleged payments included partial funding of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

By David Marcus Fox News

Published April 23, 2026 2:24pm EDT

Facebook Twitter Threads Flipboard Comments Print Email Add Fox News on Google

close

Video

Southern Poverty Law Center charged with fraud over alleged extremist group payments

Fox News' Christina Coleman joins 'Fox News @ Night' reporting on the Southern Poverty Law Center's fraud charges for allegedly funneling donor money to extremist groups. Democrats criticize the indictment, while conservatives blast SPLC's history of labeling right-wing organizations as hate groups.

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

This week, the Department of Justice dropped a bombshell indictment alleging not just that the "anti-racism" organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been running a spy ring, but that it has actually paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the very White supremacist groups it claims to be fighting.

It truly could be a Dave Chappelle sketch, right down to the fact that the SPLC funded, in part, the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which the lie that President Donald Trump called neo-Nazis "very fine people" was born.

Trump never called the White supremacists "very fine people," but it turns out the SPLC was handing them bags of cash.

The biggest takeaway from this scandal is that actual racism is so scant in our society that the SPLC has to fund it to find it.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke during a press........

© Fox News