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Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s campaign responded to a Republican attack Friday after the state GOP demanded answers from the Democratic incumbent about her past work with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Benson was a volunteer and later board member of the SPLC, which was indicted Tuesday on 11 counts in connection with allegations that it fraudulently paid members of extremist groups like the KKK and those arrested at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the SPLC paid members of these extremist groups to create a “work product that reported on these activities.”
“Jocelyn Benson has always touted her experience as a leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group the Justice Department says has secretly given money to the KKK and other hate groups they allegedly target,” the Michigan Republican Party said on its official X account on Friday.
“What do you know Jocelyn, until when?”
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Michigan Attorney General Jocelyn Benson appears at the event. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
After graduating from college in Massachusetts in 2004, Benson moved to Alabama to work for the SPLC where he helped investigate hate groups and hate crimes, according to the Harvard Law Review.
He also visited the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma where civil rights figures such as Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., marched and was badly beaten by law enforcement.
An official with Benson’s campaign confirmed that he worked as a volunteer researcher for the SPLC after college and later served on the Montgomery-based group’s board from 2014-2018.
But when pressed on what Benson knew about the allegations leveled by the DOJ, his campaign pushed back on the Republican Party attack.
“Jocelyn Benson has spent her career advancing the unfinished business of civil rights and expanding economic opportunity, including helping to dismantle anti-Nazi hate networks across the country,” the campaign told Fox News Digital on Friday.
“And while Donald Trump is trying to use his Justice Department to thwart his reckless economic policies that are raising costs for Michiganders, Jocelyn remains focused on keeping costs down, raising wages, and protecting the rights and freedoms of the people of this state.”
Republicans continued to press Benson for answers.
MIGOP chairman Jim Runestad told Fox News Digital that Benson’s tenure on the SPLC board coincided with the time when the DOJ alleged that the group began “paying off the KKK and other extremist groups.”
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“Benson should explain to the public what he knows about the alleged conduct of the SPLC, given the crimes that began when Benson was appointed to the Board,” Runestad said.
Benson has previously described his early work at the SPLC as focusing on investigating extremist groups.
In a 2025 interview with “Keen on America,” Benson recounts groups of researchers who “claim reincarnation [Adolf] Hitler,” saying he once sat alone in a hotel room in Spartanburg and was afraid those people would “find out who I am and come and kill me and no one will know about it and everyone else.”
“And that was a brave act, small and no one saw it, but it helped me build brave muscles and several other points throughout my life so that 20 years later, 25 years later, when I was against the president of the United States, it wasn’t the first time I had to fight those painful battles,” Benson continued in the interview.
In an earlier comment, SPLC official Penny Weaver described Benson as coming to Montgomery “right out of college as an unpaid student, then working for us.”
“Benson was working as a waiter so he could support himself so he could continue volunteering at the center,” Weaver said, adding that Benson begged him to be able to volunteer at the SPLC.
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The SPLC is a left-wing nonprofit that has long said it fights white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement about them in order to break up the groups. SPLC executive director Bryan Fair addressed the investigation in a video message posted online, arguing that the Trump administration “doesn’t hide who they want to protect and who they want to destroy.”
“We are reviewing the allegations,” said a follow-up statement from Fair sent to Fox News Digital. “However, after the Justice Department’s press conference today, we are outraged by the false allegations leveled against the SPLC – an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope against white supremacy and various forms of injustice to build a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive. Taking the violent hatred and extremism that we believe exists among the most dangerous labor groups and which we believe exists among the most dangerous labor groups very much and we believe there is To be clear, this program has saved people’s lives.”
The full list of these groups, according to a Justice Department press release, includes the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Unite the Right, National Alliance, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, National Socialist Party of America (American Nazi Party), and the American Front.
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Blanche and FBI Director Patel also argued Tuesday that the SPLC had tried to hide its payments to groups the SPLC told its donors it was trying to fight, which led to fewer indictments.
Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch and Fox News’ Alec Schemmel and Jake Gibson and David Spunt contributed to this report..
