By Glen Allen, Esq., FEF President

Friends of FEF,

As many of you know, I was a victim – one of many – of the odious Southern Poverty Law Center’s fraudulent and criminal conduct. In 2016, the SPLC, led by the hateful Hedi Beirich, orchestrated a campaign against me with the aim and successful result of having me fired from the Baltimore Law Department, impairing my family and social relationships, and sullying my reputation as a competent, ethical, and honorable attorney.  I do not use the word “orchestrated” lightly. On the day Beirich and the SPLC attacked me, I was headline news in a dozen newspapers in Beirich’s network of connections, as far away as England and Los Angeles, and the SPLC  put my photograph on the back of its infamous “Hate Map” right between Donald Trump and Steve Bannon with the caption “We’ve stopped Nazis from infiltrating state governments.”  I had news reporters in front of my house.

What was my crime in the reptilian eyes of the SPLC and Beirich?  Just this: certain perfectly legal associations decades prior with Dr. William Pierce and the National Alliance, plus – horrors! —  my attendance at a Holocaust revisionist conference on National Alliance property.  And how did Beirich and the SPLC learn of these aspects of my private life?  The answer is by bribing or otherwise illegally and tortiously inveigling a National Alliance employee to turn over confidential information regarding me and others to the SPLC.

I fought back.  I sued Beirich and the SPLC in federal court, alleging multiple causes of action, including claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). I not only sought redress for my own injuries but challenged SPLC’s tax-favored status as a 501c3 nonprofit. The Maryland District Court, however, dismissed my complaint on the rationale that the facts I alleged – and I alleged in detail the SPLC’s odious and illegal tactics – were not “plausible.”  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in an unpublished and cursory opinion affirmed.

I mention this history because the Department of Justice this week brought a criminal indictment against the SPLC, accusing it of just the type of criminal activity I described in my complaint. The indictment sets forth numerous incidents of SPLC’s criminal behavior, including its illegal manipulation of the National Alliance employee as set forth in my complaint.

At one level I feel vindicated.  Among the most painful aspects of my SPLC experience was having friends, relatives, and others brush off my complaint as though I were a disgruntled kook attacking a venerable civil rights organization.  No impartial person who investigated the SPLC should have maintained such a view even then, but surely not now.  The SPLC for decades in plain sight has been illegally and criminally profiteering from “hate” that it manufactured.  It is long past time that it be held accountable.  I wish for, and predict, the DOJ’s full success in its litigation against the SPLC and hope that loathsome entity is shut down and its officers and operatives, including Beirich, are put behind bars.

On another level, however, I remain disappointed and frustrated at how our legal system treated me and other SPLC victims, failing to give us the impartial justice to which we are entitled. The system did not rise to the occasion but sank to a shallow and dismissive political Wokism that for many of us will always tarnish our view of the judiciary.

What’s next in this SPLC saga?  You may be assured that I and other legal minds in FEF’s milieu will be zealously investigating what old claims can be revived and new claims pursued against the SPLC as a result of the DOJ litigation. In the imagery of the old Greek mythology, the SPLC has sown dragon’s teeth and now must deal with the angry warriors its evil deeds have spawned.

Glen Allen, Esq. heads the Free Expession Foundation which is an organization dedicated to defending those who have gotten on the wrong side of our politically correct legal system. Here is their Donation Page.