Earlier this week, the Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to secretly pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, including Unite the Right, which was responsible for the Charlottesville protest in 2017 that resulted in the death of a protester named Heather Heyer.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (pictured above) expects the investigation to find that the SPLC organized that rally.
"Whether they were the leaders or the initiators, that'll come out eventually," he said.
American Family Association Vice President Ed Vitagliano says President Donald Trump and his base were relentlessly demonized by the SPLC and the Left for that bloody conflict and other protests, which they knew was a lie.
"If a confrontation like Charlottesville was indeed even partly funded by the SPLC in order to make a political statement about a problem that does not exist, this is a problematic development in our political discourse," he asserts. "It calls into question all sorts of confrontations, political and cultural, that we've seen in this country over at least the last six years."
"It's crazy," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Fox News on Wednesday when asked about the announcement.
He wants to know if any of these so-called informants were also paid by the James Comey or Christopher Wray FBI.
"On January 6, there were 26 confidential human sources, informants and sources, here at the Capitol," he told Fox News. "Seventeen entered the restricted space. Four of them went in the Capitol. None of them were charged. I want to know about that, too."
Jordan also pointed out that the SPLC, an organization long praised by Democrats, was "supposed to be the standard bearer" against extremism. He remembers the Biden FBI cited the SBLC when it went after the Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty, pro-lifers and Catholics.
Vitagliano says the Obama and Biden administrations certainly used the SPLC's propaganda to spread lies about their political opponents.
"Given how closely the Obama administration and the Biden administration were allied with the SPLC to be suspicious of conservatives and evangelical Christians and Catholics, it would not surprise me that that kind of collusion existed," Vitagliano concludes.
The SPLC has publicly and strongly pushed back against the Justice Department's indictment, framing it as politically motivated and a threat to civil rights advocacy.
Editor's Note: American Family Association is the parent organization of the American Family News Network, which operates AFN.net.
