CORN, POPPED: Southern Poverty Law Center says it faces a Justice Department criminal probe over paid informants.
“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment.
The Southern Poverty Law Center previously paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities, often sharing it with local and federal law enforcement, Fair said. It was used to monitor threats of violence, he said, adding that the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.
“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”
That was a long time ago. This is the SPLC’s present: However Bad You Think Biden’s DOJ Was, New Documents Show It Was Even Worse. “Imagine a leftist group with ties to Antifa puts conservatives and Christians on a “hate map” with defunct chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, and that map inspires an act of terrorism and would go on to contribute to the demonization of Turning Point USA ahead of the Charlie Kirk assassination.”
