American Free Press Panel Discussion on the SPLC Indictment

The Department of Justice recently announced that a federal grand jury in Alabama has charged the Southern Poverty Law Center with multiple counts of wire and bank fraud. Talk radio host James Edwards assembled a special panel of attorneys and activists and asked them to express their thoughts about the indictment.

To ensure a diversity of perspectives, these expert contributors were asked to share their initial reactions and personal experiences with the SPLC and were otherwise encouraged to focus on aspects of this development they believed readers would find most compelling.

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Glen Allen, Esq., Chief Legal Officer and Director of the Free Expression Foundation (FEF): I was a victim – one of many – of the odious SPLC’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 an attorney. 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? By bribing or otherwise illegally 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. The 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.” So, at one level, I feel vindicated by the DOJ’s indictment, which confirms numerous incidents of SPLC’s criminal behavior, including its illegal manipulation of the National Alliance employee as set forth in my complaint.

On another level, 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 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 zealously investigate which old claims can be revived and which new claims can be pursued against the SPLC as a result of the DOJ litigation.

Lydia Brimelow, President of the Berkeley Springs Castle Foundation and half of the husband-wife team that ran VDare: My only question about the SPLC indictment is, what does this mean for the Historic American Nation? There are several facets of the answer that particularly interest me.

1. Does it damage the SPLC? Undeniably. Even if a large portion of their donors rally around and they drum up support to defend themselves against “persecution,” a flaw has been revealed. It will have repercussions. Not only will some portion of their donors lose enthusiasm, but the ability for our enemies to use the SPLC as their weapon of choice in Cancel Culture battles has been profoundly handicapped. And who knows, some of them might even go to jail. A girl can dream!

2. Does it benefit the SPLC or any of the Leftist with whom they are in league? They were hiding these transactions for a reason. If they thought the exposure would help their cause it would have been in their public communications. Even in the worst case for us – they beat the charges – great! It’s still an ugly clean-up job. The more resources they waste the better. Best case scenario for us…could be historic.

3. Does it damage the Historic American Nation? Not directly. It is extremely annoying that some influential voices of the mainstream Right are using the SPLC indictments to falsely claim that Unite the Right was a hoax, and it is worth correcting them. On the one hand, it shows how profoundly uninvested in our people they are. On the other hand, the distance (however inappropriate given the facts) that Fake News creates between the massive smear job that Charlottesville turned out to be, may permit some normal Americans to reconsider their fear in associating with right wing activism. Scapegoats have a purpose after all, and they do important psychological work. There is obviously the question of the paid informants and the people who were informed on, but I have to assume that if any juicy tidbit was shared, the SPLC has already cashed in on it. It’s all from years ago. The damage there is most likely already done.

4. Does it benefit the Historic American Nation? Yes. We should take any and all opportunities to celebrate, unconditionally. A federal indictment that will precipitate massive discovery against our enemies is an objective good, even if the SPLC manages to throw it off. In the best-case scenario – and I’m just talking about logical possibilities here, not realistic ones – the SPLC gets shut down.

Hope is a dangerous thing because disappointment is so painful. I have seen months lead to years when there are no victories. In that interminable desert, keeping the faith takes real effort. And, ultimately, God’s time is not our time – we may never see victory. But we’re called to fight, and we’re called to rally, and victory comes one win at a time.

So, pop some champagne and take this win, patriots! We’re joining you in a toast at Berkeley Springs Castle.

Kyle J. Bristow, Esq., Founder of Bristow Law, PLLC: I was pleasantly surprised when I first heard that the Southern Poverty Law Center had been indicted for having committed felonies. The SPLC has, for decades, viciously targeted and harassed law-abiding American citizens who espouse traditional, Christian, politically conservative, and patriotic ideals, and I am optimistic that the SPLC’s campaign of hate is coming to an end.

For far too long, the SPLC has smeared the reputations of people and organizations that are opposed to the SPLC’s degenerate, leftist worldview. Such smearing fosters a culture of self-censorship and ostracism at best, but violent crime at worst, which is antithetical to core American values. After a gunman walked into the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in 2012 with the goal of gunning down Christians, the FRC president, Tony Perkins, said that he believed that the shooter was motivated by the SPLC.

Although I am hopeful that the SPLC will be convicted and severely punished, such as losing its tax-exempt status or even being dissolved as a corporate entity, the legal process itself will be horrifically painful for the SPLC. I enthusiastically anticipate Republican state and federal lawmakers conducting invasive investigations and holding public hearings to deeply delve into the political and financial misconduct of the SPLC. A law firm that litigates class action lawsuits may even file a major racketeering lawsuit against the SPLC to recover the hundreds of millions of dollars the SPLC has unlawfully and fraudulently received over the years, after engaging in systematic mail and wire fraud against its duped donors.

The SPLC is morally rotten to its core, and this is readily becoming apparent to the public. The federal criminal indictment and significant press coverage associated with the same are far more damaging to the SPLC than even the 2019 allegations of rampant sexual harassment, gender discrimination, race discrimination, and toxic work culture, which culminated in SPLC co-founder Morris Dees being terminated.

There is nothing “southern” about the SPLC. There is nothing “poverty” about the SPLC. And now it is clear that the SPLC may be more of a criminal syndicate than a “law firm.”

Sam Bushman, Owner of the Liberty News Radio Network and CEO of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA): For decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has cast itself as America’s moral authority on hatred and extremism. That authority is collapsing under the weight of its own record.

Their most dangerous weapon is the “hate map.” In 2012, a gunman entered the Family Research Council headquarters intent on mass murder — after finding them listed on the SPLC’s website. He said so himself. That is not incidental. That is a direct, documented line between reckless labeling and real bloodshed.

I know this personally. I am a radio host, patriot advocate, and CEO of the CSPOA. Sheriff Richard Mack and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association were falsely branded by the SPLC as advocates of violence. It was a lie. They retracted it — quietly. Accusations travel fast. Corrections don’t. Sheriff Mack and I have offered $10,000 to anyone producing credible evidence linking either of us to violence. No one has claimed it. Not one person.

The walls are closing in. State attorneys general have raised formal concerns about the SPLC’s conduct. Federal scrutiny has followed. Then came Atlanta — an SPLC attorney was arrested on domestic terrorism charges after Molotov cocktails were hurled at a police training facility. The organization that has spent decades branding others as dangerous now has answering of its own to do.

This is not a political disagreement. It is a reckoning. The same standard of accountability that the SPLC has weaponized against patriots, sheriffs, and citizens for decades must now be applied to them. Full investigation. Full transparency. Prosecution where the evidence demands it. The rule of law has no exceptions. Not even for those who built a career deciding who deserves to be called dangerous.

Sam Dickson, Esq.: The indictment is greatly overestimated in the minds of our adherents. It is thin soup that charges the SPLC with technical violations of bank regulations. The “crimes” seem improbable. Since when have donors been entitled to a line-by-line breakdown of the activities of the group getting the donation?

Hasn’t it been pretty much common knowledge that the SPLC plants agents in organizations it targets and bribes officers and members of such organizations to steal information so the SPLC can use it to damage the professional careers of members of such organizations?

The indictment conceals the identities of the sleazeballs who took the bribes, which, to me, indicates the government’s desire to pull its punches. I am pessimistic that we will ever learn the identities of the plants and the bribed informants.

The indictment also fuels the misleading narrative currently being pushed by cuckservatives that by bribing members of these organizations to provide the SPLC with information with which to harm the careers of adherents, the SPLC was “financing hate.”

In a sane society (not one like ours), the SPLC would be a laughingstock. The SPLC is a parody of the liberals’ parody of Senator Joseph McCarthy. For three generations, liberals have ridiculed McCarthy for “guilt by association.” The SPLC practices guilt by association (it calls it “links” to avoid triggering memories in the atrophied brains of liberals) on meth.

The “links” used by the SPLC to smear its targets include geographic guilt by association (“John Doe comes from an area of North Carolina once known for “racism”), audience guilt by association (“John Doe spoke at Berkeley University and a known neo-Nazi sat in the audience”) and even quotation guilt by association (“John Doe denies that he is a Nazi but SPLC research proves that something he wrote was quoted in a Nazi publication”).

The SPLC’s mode of thinking mirrors that of schizophrenics. Normal people’s brains do not hatch screwball ideas that a shared geographic location, the presence of someone in an audience listening to a speaker, or the mere fact that someone wrote something and was quoted by someone else establishes any rational connection.

Schizophrenics think and talk that way. So does the SPLC. We should focus on exposing the intrinsic madness of the SPLC and take a more sober view of this indictment, which will likely be a financial bonanza for the SPLC and will be used to raise another several hundred million dollars.

Paul Fromm, Director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE): The indictment of the SPLC is an amazing breakthrough and may help weaken one of the most morally corrupt organizations in the United States with its gargantuan $800 million endowment. That it paid agitators to create the “racism” and “hate” it purports to fight should sit poorly with many donors. It’s like a fire department setting fires to justify their existence and hours of overtime.

Hopefully, it will weaken them, especially among those corporations that send them fat checks. It may also chill the trust the lamestream media has placed in them as the go-to source to tell them who the “haters” and “extremists” are, with the SPLC’s “hate map” having included everyone from conservative Christians and parents protesting perverted curricula in their schools.

In Canada, we have the pernicious Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which got its start-up seed money from the SPLC and, like the SPLC, spies on nationalists and dissenters and briefs the media as to who the “haters” are. Both groups have cost many good people their jobs, making a mockery of the right to freedom of speech. In the U.S., after a trial and, hopefully, convictions, perhaps citizens who have been defamed, deplatformed, debanked, or fired because of the SPLC may find justice.

Dr. Michael Hill, President of the Southern Nationalist League (SNL): Yes, Charlottesville was a set-up involving high-level officials and likely numerous infiltrators. But it was also a legitimate outpouring of White/Southern nationalist sentiment that scared the hell out of the establishment. Now, after nine years, someone is looking to refashion the Charlottesville story for their own benefit. That’s why those of us who were there should be the first and loudest to insist that the truth be finally told.

I was in Charlottesville as Chief of The League of the South (LS), the largest single organization to participate in UTR. Michael Tubbs (LS Chief of Staff) and I were at the head of that column that marched down East Market Street and had to fight our way into Lee Park while the local and state cops stood down and watched the mayhem take place. In other words, I was there and solely responsible for the LS and its UTR logistical planning and funding, its tactical and operational planning, and its overall goal of defending our beleaguered Southern culture and heritage. I sure as hell know better than Trump and MAGA about what went on that day. In short, they are liars. To what larger purpose remains to be seen, but I’d bet whatever it is goes to the benefit of Trump himself.

But as with much of Trump’s bombastic and ego-driven babbling, Charlottesville, too, is a flimsily constructed falsehood. As my friend and compatriot Brad Griffin posted on X: “Hundreds of White Nationalists got together in 2017, plotted with the SPLC how to make Trump look bad, and drove to Charlottesville to carry out their plan. Part of the organizers’ plan was to get sued for millions of dollars while not being able to afford legal representation.”

May the God of our fathers separate the truth from lies and bring His wrath and judgment upon the purveyors of the latter.

Jason Kessler, Unite the Right organizer and author of Charlottesville and the Death of Free Speech: Obviously, the SPLC indictment is great news and yet another example of the benefit we get out of Trump that we wouldn’t get from any other president.

It’s a double-edged sword regarding the revelations about an SPLC informant at Unite the Right. On the one hand, sunlight is almost always a good thing. We want to know who this is and pray that the identity of F-37 is revealed. And yet, on the other hand, the revelation has sparked a wave of false conspiracy theories about Charlottesville being “staged.”

I am not an attorney, but I have spent many years in legal combat, including as a successful pro se litigant. On its face, the allegations against the SPLC clearly and logically have merit. It’s about committing wire fraud and money laundering, not hiring an informant. For once, the shoe is on the other foot, and our enemies will face trial in a potentially hostile jurisdiction in Alabama.

Some people say that this part of Alabama is the “Black belt” because of the high Black population, but I could see Black people also being offended about SPLC paying people to make “racist posts online.” Time will tell.

Kirk Lyons, Esq., Founder and Chief Trial Counsel for the Southern Legal Resource Center (SLRC): Since the indictment, I’ve fielded about 15 calls about the SPLC case, including an FBI inquiry about my 1989 quote on their involvement in the Shelby Bookstore murder case. This suggests a broader investigation.

Most of the former SPLC leadership has left, including Morris Dees and Richard Cohen in 2019, as well as Mark Potok and Heidi Beirich. But they still have an estimated $800 million endowment, and they are rallying with other left-of-center “civil rights” groups to fight the indictment.

We need to push the administration to proceed vigorously, find ways to share information with the DOJ, and encourage them to expand the investigation through our Congressmen and DOJ contacts (especially in the US Attorney’s office in Montgomery).

The SPLC’s strategy will be to delay, including by filing a motion to quash the indictment, and, if there is a trial, to appeal any verdict they don’t like. I seriously doubt they will settle with the DOJ. I assume they will fight for all they are worth and try to run out the clock on the Trump administration, because when it’s over, this all shuts down.

Dependent on any proven revelations of wrongdoing from the DOJ, any groups looking to jump in on this with a private cause of action need to be united, well-organized, and well-funded.

Experiencing the SPLC discovery process was quite an education for me and was unrelenting and brutal. Whatever we do, we need to take advantage of this situation to learn all we can about SPLC’s skullduggery and inner workings, and keep the press spotlight on the SPLC’s many scandals and abuses. I look forward to seeing what the DOJ can prove.

Rev. Bret McAtee, Pastor of Christ the King Reformed Church (Charlotte, Michigan): I popped a cork from the finest champagne and celebrated when I heard of the SPLC being hoisted on their own petard. I only pray now that the ADL, B’nai Brith, and the ACLU will also soon get a similar comeuppance. Finally, the loathsome SPLC has been indicted. “Whatsoever a man soweth he shall also reap.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that this organization will be convicted in a court of law, but for now, the spotlight has been turned on them to expose the hate-filled nature of their hate-filled lies.

My objection to the SPLC was their contention that there was something errant or unworthy about hate. Scripture clearly teaches that God hates all workers of iniquity (Ps. 5:5). Scripture tells us that there are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to Him (Prov. 6:16 and Zech. 8:17). The Holy Spirit instructs His people to “Hate that which is evil, cling to that which is good.”

Next, Christians have to get past thinking that there is something intrinsically wrong with “hate.” How can we not hate that which the Lord Christ loves? How can we not hate that which seeks to destroy the good, the true, and the beautiful, as Christianity defines the good, the true, and the beautiful? Instead of defending ourselves from charges of hate, we should step up to the mic and say, “Of course I hate that which is vile, false, and ugly. Who wouldn’t?” Christians who don’t hate the SPLC and the parallel organizations are not right in the head. Tolerance of evil folks is not a virtue.

Finally, and this will probably fly right by people, Christians need to realize that Biblical hatred is built on the foundation of love. It is because we love people that we stand in opposition to them when they attack those things God counts as lovely. We should communicate to the Christ-hating cosmopolitans that we understand their attack on that which is virtuous is part of their pursuit of the establishment of the perverse.

Because of these instructions, I gladly admit that I hate the SPLC with a holy hatred since it has consistently revealed itself as an organization that hates that which God loves (Ps. 139:21). Indeed, the SPLC has always used its hate list as a proxy war to seek to destroy Biblical Christians and Biblical Christianity. It’s clear that any organization that claimed to be an authority on identifying hate while refusing to name “antifa” as a hate group was working with an ax to grind.

Sheriff Richard Mack, Founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA): I have been lied about by the SPLC for over 25 years. I have called them out on it numerous times. As I analyzed their modus operandi, I discovered what they were just indicted for: lying to their donors about me and who I was to scare them into donating more money. This is what the SPLC has always done, and they have made a tremendous amount of money doing it.

For example, the SPLC has said numerous times that my national organization and I have promoted and advocated violence and that the CSPOA is a paramilitary organization. I challenged them to show one example in which I ever promoted violence or committed an act of violence in my life. I even challenged them to an open debate about any of their baseless accusations. Of course, they refused.

Why? Because they cannot afford to be exposed to the public or to their supporters regarding their “sales tactics.” Now, finally, they have been exposed, and I would be happy to testify against them.

Padraig Martin, former government contractor and author of A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story: I may be the last individual outside of the criminal justice system to have seen James Fields in person. In fact, in many ways, I became an inadvertent eyewitness to the depths at which the system fought against those of us who simply wanted to preserve a monument and a people’s heritage. Why? Because I was arrested in Charlottesville after the Unite the Right rally was deemed “unlawful,” I was charged with a criminal offense entirely unrelated to the event. That which I witnessed was a study in government tyranny.

After UTR, I had the misfortune of losing the keys to my car. While attempting to break into my own vehicle, the Virginia State Police stopped me. I explained it was my car and told them that I had a gun in my pocket and where to find it. I also explained that I had a legal concealed carry permit in my home country, Florida. Given that Virginia and Florida had a reciprocity agreement, the matter should have ended with a misdemeanor citation (failure to carry said permit, which I left at home). I was not engaged in criminal activity, and I had a legal right to carry. Instead, the State Police chose to process me in a makeshift, underground station beneath the Charlottesville courthouse, where I sat, watched, and listened.

At the time, because I was in their custody, I had no idea about the James Fields incident. I listened to the State Police complain more about Terry Maculiffe’s decision to fly to Charlottesville and the resultant helicopter crash. I heard them speak about a car crash (the Fields incident) and that a woman hospitalized as a result would be fine. I watched as they took calls from various city officials, discussed matters with federal law enforcement wearing White Nationalist regalia (including several whom I recognized at the park earlier in the day), and joked amongst themselves quite frequently. After finally allowing me to wash off a strange irritant that the antifa had thrown at us, they took me to the Albemarle County jail to get processed in front of a Magistrate.

While sitting with handcuffs behind my back on a wooden bench, a disheveled young man in a polo was brought into the room by officers and sat on a bench somewhat caddy-cornered from me. I thought to myself that this was a poor kid who got a DUI on the wrong day. He looked flushed and almost stoned. I genuinely thought he was drunk. I told him, “Don’t worry. It will be alright.” That solicited a bark from one of two officers behind the glass not to talk to one another.

An officer came into and out of the Magistrate’s processing room several times, asking Fields questions or making declaratory statements on his behalf. Fields answered willingly or agreed to the statements without the privilege of an attorney. “Is that when you sped up?” “Did you say you did this?” “Do you admit you did that?” His answers were mumbled, further reinforcing my belief that he was a drunk college kid – not the monster he was later made out to be. He was then led into the Magistrate’s room, and I assumed I would see him inside. Instead, I was let out simply because I owned a home in Virginia, which I had to put up as some kind of collateral. It was not until Monday that I found out who Fields was, when we were both arraigned in Charlottesville court. I sat in the courtroom surrounded by antifa having their charges dropped one by one; his arraignment was via video. At that moment, I knew I was a witness to a crime – one committed by the State of Virginia against Mr. Fields.

Lew Moore, former Congressional Chief-of-Staff, Ron Paul’s Presidential Campaign Manager, and host of the Hour of Decision podcast: I believe the indictment of SPLC had been in the “hip pocket” of the Trump DOJ for some time, to be brought out if/when needed for maximum political impact. After all, the liberal Montgomery Advertiser newspaper exposed a mountain of perfidy on the part of Morris Dees and this strange “poverty” law center as far back as the 1990s. We’re told even the Biden administration was considering a crackdown. There is much evidence that the Trump political operation is currently trying to pivot to fire up the base for the upcoming election, and away from bad war and economic realities. This move at the SPLC is one element of the “pivot.”

The SPLC had overreached, extending its “Hate Map” toward Trump allies Dennis Praeger, Franklin Graham, and TPUSA. The hideous greed of this organization eventually made it a liability to the Left as well, not to mention increasing allegations of internal discrimination against Blacks, etc. This left them with no political cover, allowing the hammer to fall. But whether actual individual actors will be perp-walked and the organization completely bankrupted, not merely fined, remains to be seen.

That the DOJ’s point of attack has been the infiltration of provocateurs within right-wing groups offers Zionist-influenced elements around Trump an opportunity. This malign foreign influence has openly sought to purge influencers within the old Trump base who have exposed them. Unfortunately, through ignorance or design, some of these same influencers have decided to defame, without evidence, the organizers of the Charlottesville rally and other patriots as SPLC plants. Watch this entire turn of events carefully, and all lies must be called out.

Dr. Tomislav Sunic, former Croatian diplomat: I have long had the dubious distinction of being featured on the SPLC website as “a white nationalist author, radio host, and fixture on the white nationalist speaker circuit.” I have also had the privilege—albeit not noted by the SPLC—of growing up in communist Yugoslavia, becoming familiar at an early age with the nature of the communist totalitarian mindset, its lawfare, and its ceaseless manufacturing of “fascism” and “white supremacism” threats. Even if there were no longer any fascists around, the communist judiciary would fabricate them in order to provide itself with international legitimacy.

Having been subjected to such communist demonology, and having seen my late father—a Catholic lawyer—spend considerable time in a Yugoslav communist prison for his anti-communist writings, I had no problem detecting the same language and legal patterns in the SPLC. This did not surprise me, especially given that in the early 1980s, I encountered more communist-minded professors and grad students on U.S. college campuses than in the entire Eastern European communist educational system.

Most Americans still do not realize that the SPLC is not the only player in this demon-hunting game; there are dozens of similar antifascist, communist-inspired, well-funded virtue-signaling leagues all over the US and the EU: the Jewish-Zionist-inspired ADL, the UK-based Hope Not Hate, the powerful and government-funded Amadeu Antonio Stiftung in Germany, the DÖW in Austria, and the CRIF and LICRA in France. All of them function on the same principle: resurrecting dead fascist foes in order to cover up their live academic and media smearing campaigns against dissident voices. With the massive racial changes due to decades of uncontrolled migration, coupled with a still-resilient and strong DEI-influenced judiciary, in the years to come the US will likely face a Soviet-like scenario of mutual hatred of all against all.

The fundamental mistake of self-proclaimed US and EU white nationalists is their often childish sporting of fascist and martial insignia, which provides additional fodder for bans or deplatforming by local authorities. Often, it is their total ignorance of the genealogy of cultural fascisms and their offshoots in prewar Europe that makes them look grotesque and dangerous in the eyes of the wider population. Whoever marches along with “Hollywood Nazis” or their look-alikes must know that there are powerful interests behind them who profit from such silly—if not outright retarded—behavior.

An edited version of this article was originally published by American Free Press – America’s last real newspaper! Click here to subscribe today or call 1-888-699-NEWS.

When not interviewing newsmakers, James Edwards has often found himself in the spotlight as a commentator, including many national television appearances. Over the past 20 years, his radio work has been featured in hundreds of newspapers and magazines worldwide. Media Matters has referred to Edwards as a “right-wing media fixture” and Hillary Clinton personally named him as an “extremist” who would shape our country.

Alabama Opens Its Own Investigation Into the Southern Poverty Law Center

The law center, based in Montgomery, has drawn the ire of conservatives in recent years. Last month, the Justice Department charged the group with financial crimes.

Listen · 2:58 min

The Alabama attorney general’s office announced on Monday that it was opening its own investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center, less than a month after the Justice Department charged the organization with several financial crimes.

The law center, which is based in Montgomery, Ala., has drawn the ire of conservatives in recent years for targeting groups that many of them consider mainstream. That conflict came to a head in April, when the Justice Department charged the organization with crimes that included wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In a statement, the Alabama attorney general’s office applauded the Justice Department’s actions and said that it was separately investigating the law center to determine whether “the S.P.L.C.’s activity within the state also ran afoul of the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act or state laws related to charitable organizations.”

“Thanks to the U.S. Justice Department’s action to deal with the S.P.L.C., the state’s efforts have now received a shot in the arm,” the attorney general, Steve Marshall, said in the statement. “We look forward to learning more about the inner workings of an organization that we have long believed was rotten, but until recently, has been impervious.”

Continues…