The cold silence of the SPLC’s interim director clearly exposed the hate that simmers within the group, Rep. Mark Harris said on “Washington Watch” on Tuesday.
Bryan Fair was representing the SPLC at a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee. Harris, a North Carolina Republican, had just played a clip of Floyd Corkins, the Family Research Council (FRC) shooter in 2012, explaining to the FBI how he came to target FRC employees.
Corkins entered the FRC building armed with a 9mm handgun, extra ammunition and a backpack. He told security guard Leonardo Johnson words to the effect of "I don't like your politics" before opening fire. Johnson was shot in the arm but fought back, disarmed Corkins and prevented what prosecutors later said could have become a mass-casualty attack.
“Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups. I found them online, researching their website, stuff like that,” Corkins, now in federal prison, told FBI investigators.
The SPLC’s “hate map” has become widely known. It is an interactive database created by the SPLC to identify and track organizations it classifies as hate groups and antigovernment extremist groups in the U.S. The map allows users to search by state, ideology and year, and it includes downloadable data going back to 2000.
FRC is on the list, as is American Family Association (AFA), the parent organization of AFN.
A federal grand jury in April indicted the SPLC on 11 counts, among them wire fraud, false statements to a bank and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The group is accused of financially backing the very groups it raised money to oppose.
Corkins was prepared not only for murder but to humiliate FRC.
“He went in with 50 rounds of ammunition, 15 Chick-Fil-A sandwiches that he was going to stuff in the mouths of his victims,” show host Tony Perkins, the FRC president, said.
Yet the clip and the reality of such a major killing of innocents subverted had no obvious impact on Fair.
“I'm saying that he had very little to no reaction to that when I pressed. I said, ‘How does it make you feel to now see this video?’ Again, he came back with just one of his taglines, saying, ‘We continue to speak out against groups that we consider hold those attitudes of hate,’” Harris told Perkins.
Harris served as senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was president of the state’s Baptist State Convention from 2011-2013 where he was a key leader in passing the state’s 2012 Marriage Amendment.
Fox News reported this hearing comes less than a year after Margaret Huang, the SPLC’s full-time director, stepped down last July citing family responsibilities. Her resignation came roughly a year after the SPLC laid off nearly 80 employees, about one-quarter of its workforce.
The SPLC's staff union accused management of mishandling the layoffs and characterized them as union-busting.
Some former employees, union supporters and conservative commentators have argued that the staff revolt and controversy surrounding the layoffs weakened Huang’s position and contributed to her departure.
Fair is a former chair of the SPLC board of directors now serving as the interim leader of the organization. He previously shared his worldview as a constitutional law professor at the University of Alabama School of Law where he taught for more than three decades.
Throughout the hearing, Fair remained unmoved by the role the SPLC played in a near-massacre.
“He really didn’t have any reaction to it,” Harris said.
Democrats like Jamie Raskin, Jesús García and Jasmine Crockett praised and defended the work of the SPLC while at times criticizing the hearing itself.
Republicans pressed Fair not only on SPLC’s hate speech against FRC but other conservative groups such as Mom’s for Liberty as well.
Moms for Liberty aims to unite, educate and empower parents to defend their rights at all levels of government, the group’s website states.
“Moms for Liberty, I had a number of letters from people of Moms for Liberty who had been incredibly adversely affected, even down to the personal child custody situations where a mom was being told that she was part of an extremist group, thanks to that hate map,” Harris said.
