The SPLC’s interim chief says the DOJ is investigating the organization for criminal charges
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Southern Poverty Law Center interim chief Bryan Fair said in a Tuesday video that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating the agency and possibly preparing criminal charges.
“While we don’t know all the details,” Fair said in a video posted to the organization’s YouTube account, “it appears that the SPLC has previously used paid confidential informants to gather reliable intelligence on extremely violent groups.”
The SPLC is a nonprofit group that has come under fire in recent years for alleged political bias. In October, FBI Director Kash Patel severed all ties to the organization after they called Turning Point USA a hate group.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned human rights work and turned into a public polluting machine,” Patel said in an Oct. 3 in X.
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Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office building on Capitol Hill on September 16, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Their so-called ‘hate map’ has been used to denigrate ordinary Americans and incite violence,” he said at the time. “That disgraceful record makes them unfit to cooperate with the FBI.”
Fair pointed to that announcement as evidence that the SPLC was targeted by the Trump administration. He also cited a December hearing held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government titled “Partial and beneficial: SPLC’s influence on federal civil rights policy.”
Before Patel severed ties, the SPLC was working with the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies on its whistleblower program, which Fair said was at the heart of the alleged investigation.
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“We always shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI. However, we did not share our use of identifiers widely with anyone, in order to protect the identity and safety of informants and their families,” he said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) building seen in March 2020 in Montgomery, Alabama. (Barry Lewis/Photos via Getty Images)
Fair also said that the SPLC no longer works with paid informants.
In May 2025, the group published an analysis of Turning Point USA as a hate group, calling it “a well-funded, hard-line organization with links to the Southern Poverty Law Center identified by hard-line activists,” and adding that “its main strategy is sowing and exploiting the fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by LGBT immigrants, immigrants without social rights, LGBT + immigrants and immigrants they are corrupt.”
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On September 9, one day before Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, the SPLC published a newsletter that Charlie Kirk Show host Andrew Kolvet described as an attack.
Kolvet asked if the newspaper had a hand in Kirk’s death.
Charlie Kirk speaks at the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire on May 19, 2025. (Nordin Catic/Getty Images)
“Do these have a hand in the killer’s intentions?” Kolvet wrote in an October post on X.
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“We may never know, but the swirl of extreme propaganda certainly played a role. The SPLC has been accused of fraud, abuse of donations, abuse of unions, and cover-up of sexual abuse by senior leadership, all while sitting on nearly $1 billion in reserves and based in red Alabama. These are official predictions that happened quickly,” said Kolvet.
Fox News Digital reached out to the SPLC and the DOJ for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
