The headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama on February 8, 2023. The Alabama Attorney General's Office Monday issued a subpoena for documents, weeks after the U.S. Department of Justce filed criminal charges against the organization. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office Monday subpoenaed the Southern Poverty Law Center a couple of weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal charges against the organization.
The office said in a news release on Monday that it was seeking records from a now-defunct program in which the SPLC paid informants within white supremacist and extremist groups to obtain information on the groups’ activities.
“We have always suspected that they were monetizing hate and trading on race-baiting, it was just a matter of proving it,” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall in the news release. “Thanks to the U.S. Justice Department’s action to deal with the SPLC, the State’s efforts have now received a shot in the arm.”
A spokesperson for SPLC said in a statement on Monday that SPLC received word of the subpoena and that people are “currently reviewing” it.
A grand jury last month indicted the civil rights nonprofit on an 11-count indictment alleging that the payments to groups, aimed at disrupting their activities, amounted to financial support for those groups and served as fraud upon donors to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
SPLC Interim CEO and President Bryan Fair pleaded not guilty at an arraignment last week. A trial against the SPLC is scheduled for later this year. The nonprofit denies wrongdoing and has requested transcripts of the grand jury testimony, alleging that federal prosecutors may have made false statements to the grand jury.
“The informant program was successful in accomplishing its purposes: Threats and attacks were prevented, criminal activity was stopped, and information was gathered to dismantle the efforts of hate and extremist groups,” Fair said in a statement last month. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”
Legal experts have expressed doubts about the validity of the prosecution. Several former U.S. Attorneys and civil rights groups expressed their support for the SPLC and characterized the prosecution as politically motivated.
“The prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center is ill-conceived, misbegotten, and outrageous,” said former U.S. Ambassador Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, in a press briefing last week. “We’ve never seen a case like this under a Democratic or a Republican administration in our history. It is the latest in a series of unfounded, retaliatory, and weaponized prosecutions by Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and FBI that brings shame upon those storied institutions.”
The AG’s office said in its statement Monday that it sought several documents addresing several issues, including donations it received from donors, payments to informants within organizations that SPLC identified as hate or extremist organizations and whether SPLC disclosed to its donors that it was paying informants;
The subpoena that accompanied the news release stated the AG’s Office wants organization charts from the SPLC, as well as the policies and procedures that pertain to the program that recruited informants. The AG’s office set a deadline of June 1 for a response.
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Author: Ralph Chapoco