Far-left Southern Poverty Law Center reimbursed Klan members for cross-burnings: feds
The Southern Poverty Law Center paid reluctant white nationalists and Ku Klux Klan members thousands of dollars in donor money to remain in the notorious hate groups — even making them whole for money spent on cross-burnings, the Justice Department alleged in a stunning superseding indictment filed Tuesday.
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The feds initially charged the once venerable civil rights organization in April with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and money laundering conspiracy. Tuesday’s superseding indictment, filed in Montgomery, Ala. federal court, lays out some of the stories of informants who were paid in money the SPLC raised from donors on the pretext of “exposing hate and injustice” and “fighting discrimination.”
Two Klan members, identified only as F-31 and F-32, came to the SPLC in 2010 in fear for their safety and wanting to leave the hate group, the indictment alleges. Instead of helping them find a way out, prosecutors say, the pair were paid $1,200 per month, plus expenses, via a shell corporation called Rare Books Warehouse to remain in the Klan.
Some of that money, according to the indictment, was used to recruit new members and make the Klan’s notorious white robes. Among the expenses the two were reimbursed for, per the court documents, were all the costs “incurred for cross-burning events, to include the wood and fuel used.”
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Attorneys for the SPLC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
