Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been accused of lying about the conduct of the Southern Poverty Law Center, per a new court filing, giving an incorrect statement during an interview on Fox News.
President Donald Trump's Justice Department last week secured a grand jury against the SPLC, the prominent legal advocacy organization that focuses on civil rights and racial justice issues, and maintains an extensive list of known hate groups. The charges stemmed from the group's use of paid informants to infiltrate hate groups like that Klu Klux Klan and Aryan Nations, with the DOJ claiming that it defrauded donors while secretly paying out $3 million to informants. It further accused the SPLC of funding racism to find racism.
The SPLC admitted that it had used informants in the past, but counter-argued that nothing it did was illegal, the program saved lives and it no longer uses informants.
One of the DOJ's other major accusations against the group was that it did not provide the information it acquired to law enforcement officials. Speaking with Fox News's Laura Ingraham about the indictment, Blanche claimed that "no allegation or information" the group obtained via an informant was shared with law enforcement.
In a court filing from Tuesday, the SPLC hit back against the allegations and accused the DOJ of misrepresenting its conduct in numerous ways. Notably, it completely dismissed the allegations about not sharing information with informants and argued that the indictment might have been obtained with the sort of lies and misstatements.
"Acting Attorney General Blanche’s public statements claiming the SPLC failed to inform law enforcement of information gathered via the informant program, particularly in the face of evidence demonstrably proving otherwise, is especially concerning given the specific allegations surrounding the Unite the Right rally in the indictment," the SPLC's legal team wrote. "This further underscores the concerns that this indictment is a direct result of the same types of misleading and/or inaccurate statements to the grand jury that administration officials have made in the media."
The filing also added: "This prosecution is as unprecedented as it is irregular. Comments made by dministration officials and flaws in the indictment itself suggest the case results from misleading both the public and the grand jury that voted on the charges.”
