DOJ Secures Updated Southern Poverty Law Center Indictment
Source: Bloomberg Law
The Justice Department filed a superseding indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center in an apparent attempt to address deficiencies lawyers flagged with an earlier document levying fraud charges against the group.
The grand jury indictment filed Tuesday by the US attorneys office in the Middle District of Alabama, adds more detail in defense of the Trump administrations claim that the SPLC misled donors and banks by concealing payments to informants infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and other extremist groups.
DOJ alleges in the document, which replaces the earlier 11-count indictment returned by a grand jury in April, that the SPLC secretly funneled approximately $4.1 million in tax-exempt donor funds to a series of fictitious bank accounts between 2010 through 2023.
This money was used to help informants attend and host extremist group rallies, recruit new individuals to join the groups, purchase materials for cross burnings, among other activities, prosecutors argue in the indictment, which was reported earlier by CBS News.
The new indictment, publicly docketed Wednesday, also revises the April charging documents interchangeable use of false and misleading in its description of the SPLCs alleged violation of a federal bank deception statute to only reference false statements to financial institutions. Defense lawyers and former white-collar prosecutors previously told Bloomberg Law that the previous mention of false or misleading could undermine DOJs prosecution, citing US Supreme Court precedent that the statute doesnt prohibit statements to banks that are misleading but not false.
Read more: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/doj-secures-fresh-indictment-against-southern-poverty-law-center
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lonely bird
(3,066 posts)The SPLC needs to sue anyone and everyone connected with this.
Karasu
(2,164 posts)They will see that as a green light to go after any and all civil rights groups.
wolfie001
(8,067 posts)Those 6 christo-fascists on the SC.
Bayard
(30,455 posts)They've been caught.