The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization that since the 1970s has investigated and monitored extremism and hate groups in America — including white supremacists groups like Patriot Front — said Tuesday it has come under a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.

SPLC CEO Bryan Fair did not divulge details about the criminal probe, saying only that “the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”

“For 55 years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multi-racial democracy where we can all live and thrive,” Fair said. “We are therefore unsurprised to be the latest organization targeted by this administration. They have made no secret of who they want to protect and who they want to destroy.”

Historically, informants have been used by SPLC to gather intelligence on extremist groups and then report that information back to law enforcement agencies. Paid informants “saved lives” during the Civil Rights Movement when extremists were targeting churches, protests or specific activists, Fair added.

The Justice Department did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

The FBI announced in October that it would end its yearslong partnership with the SPLC. FBI Director Kash Patel said the group had turned into a “partisan smear machine.”

In the past, including after an SPLC office was firebombed in 1983, paying informants to infiltrate violent extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan was “necessary,” Fair said.

“We frequently shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI. We did not, however, share our use of informants broadly with anyone to protect the identity and safety of the informants and their families. And while we no longer work with paid informants, we continue to take their safety seriously,” he said.

The Trump administration is rife with officials who espouse conspiracy theories about paid informants, secret FBI agents infiltrating events to sabotage him and paid actors protesting whatever policy, group or person Trump disavows on a given day. The president and Patel have both claimed that paid FBI informants were “embedded” in the mob of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

That was false. The DOJ Inspector General reported in December 2024 that no undercover FBI agents were at the Jan. 6 rally. Two dozen confidential human sources were in Washington, D.C., to monitor extremist groups expected at the rally but of that two dozen, just three entered the Capitol. Other confidential human sources were on the Capitol grounds and, as the DOJ Inspector General found, some were there specifically to share information with federal law enforcement about members of the extremist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

The criminal probe of the SPLC appears to mark yet another escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on ideologies or groups that oppose far-right extremism.

Last year, Trump issued an executive order directing the federal government to root out supporters of “antifa,” or the anti-fascist movement. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that antifa is highly organized and is a domestic terrorist organization. Antifa is not, however, a centralized group, nor does it have centralized leadership. The Brennan Center for Justice noted in an analysis of the order in February that most of its terms are likely violations of the First Amendment.

After far-right commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year, Trump issued a memorandum purporting to counter domestic terrorism and organized political violence. As HuffPost reported, while the memo linked the assassinations of Kirk and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Johnson to the 2024 assassination attempts against President Donald Trump, protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a failed assassination plot against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the memo was devoid of any mention about political violence or assassinations targeting Democrats.

The memo also suggested that mere words are violence because speech that “foment[s] political violence” is domestic terrorism.

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