President Donald Trump commented on the federal charges facing the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) early Friday morning, arguing that the leftist group’s potential fraud “is another Democrat Hoax” that places the 2020 election results into doubt.
Trump made the comment in a post on Truth Social, marking the first time he has publicly addressed the allegations against the SPLC, which was charged earlier this week with multiple counts of wire fraud over its scheme to pay the leaders of multiple white supremacist groups in exchange for information.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the greatest political scams in American History, has been charged with FRAUD. This is another Democrat Hoax, along with Act Blue, and many others,” Trump wrote. “If it is true, the 2020 Presidential Election should be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
The SPLC, which started in the 1970s as an organization to push back against racism and segregation in the South, has been paying leaders of extremist groups for decades, according to an indictment unsealed by the Justice Department on Tuesday. The indictment states that the SPLC secretly used donor cash to pay so-called informants affiliated with racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, over $3 million between 2014 and 2023.
The SPLC is closely aligned with Democratic Party goals and talking points and has a political action fund that almost exclusively endorses Democrats in state and local elections in the South.
Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC paid a member of a white supremacist group that planned the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, according to the indictment. The rally, which turned deadly when a man drove his car through a crowd of counter protesters, became the main reason behind former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign. Biden pointed to the rally in his campaign announcement video, pinning blame on Trump and saying, “In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”
The SPLC has also engaged in a campaign to label mainstream conservatives as “extremists” and has used its influence to pressure social media companies and the federal government to censor conservative voices. The SPLC was used as a resource by the FBI to identify extremists before FBI Director Kash Patel cut the bureau’s ties with the leftist organization last year.
In his post on Friday morning, Trump also called out Democratic Party fundraising platform ActBlue, which is under scrutiny over accusations that it allowed foreign contributions in American elections. Trump maintains that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won by over 70 electoral votes amid major controversy over mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting methods.
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