Conservative legislators praised the FBI under Kash Patel for formally distancing itself from the Southern Poverty Law Center, and some called on the federal government to consider further action against the SPLC.
On Friday, Patel confirmed in a statement to The Daily Signal that the FBI had severed all ties to the SPLC, a far-left activist group that puts conservatives and Christians on a “hate map” next to Ku Klux Klan chapters. The “hate map” has inspired at least one terrorist attack against a conservative organization in the past.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Patel said. “Their so-called hate map has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence.”
“That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership,” Patel added.
Republican legislators praised the move.
“Sadly, the SPLC long ago abandoned its original mission in favor of progressive politics, abusing the labels of hatred and extremism to marginalize and target the views of millions of American families,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “They are a partisan political organization, and Kash Patel was absolutely right to end FBI involvement with them.”
“Good. The gravy train is finally being cut off for these woke organizations that shove far-left policies down the throats of the American taxpayers,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who represents the SPLC’s home state, told The Daily Signal. “Americans deserve a government that is laser-focused on protecting our borders and keeping our streets safe, not pushing a woke agenda.”
“The FBI cutting ties with the SPLC is a great step toward recognizing the depth of that radical organization’s dangerous targeting of Americans with dissenting views—including friends like Charlie Kirk and the Family Research Council,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal. “Congress should step up—forming a select committee to follow the money and organization of the radical Marxist Left.”
Roy, a candidate for Texas attorney general, also urged the IRS to reconsider the SPLC’s tax-exempt status.
“The SPLC should not continue to be rewarded with tax-advantaged status when it continues to engage in conduct purposefully designed to target Americans in ways foreseeably likely to endanger them,” he added.
“SPLC is a lying, corrupt defamation factory,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told The Daily Signal. “It’s shameful that the Biden Department of Justiceworked with those con artists to engage in lawfare against conservatives.”
One conservative who worked at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the SPLC brands an “anti-immigrant hate group”, noted Cotton’s previous call for the IRS to reconsider the SPLC’s tax status.
RJ Hauman, also a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, said the FBI’s distancing from the SPLC should mark the beginning, not the end, of administration moves against the leftist group.
“After all that so many of us have been put through, Kash Patel’s move to sever FBI ties with the SPLC is a beginning, not an end,” Hauman, who also serves as president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “It is an investigative call to action across town.”
“Senator Cotton sounded the alarm years ago when he urged the IRS to examine the SPLC’s abuse of nonprofit status,” Hauman noted. “Now that the FBI has acted, every corner of government must hold the SPLC accountable for fueling the radical left’s campaign to dehumanize conservatives and legitimize political violence. Their historic institutional veil has finally been ripped off.”
Reexamining Tax-Exempt Status?
In 2019, after the SPLC fired its co-founder amid racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandals, Cotton sent a letter to the IRS urging an investigation into whether the SPLC should retain its status as a nonprofit under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Cotton’s letter notes that “engaging in defamation as a business model” is not one of the examples the IRS presents as a tax-exempt purpose. It also details the SPLC’s attacks against women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, to whom it paid $3.375 million in a defamation lawsuit.
The letter also cites a terrorist attack inspired by the SPLC. In 2012, a domestic terrorist used that “hate map” to target the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian think tank in Washington, D.C. He planned to kill everyone in the building. A building manager largely foiled the attack, but suffered lifelong injuries in the process. The SPLC condemned the attack, but has kept the FRC on the “hate map” ever since.
The SPLC began as a public interest law firm focused on civil rights cases, and gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy. In the course of doing so, it developed a decades-long relationship with law enforcement. After the Klan largely disappeared, the SPLC instead turned to targeting mainstream conservative and Christian groups, putting them onto the “hate map” alongside Klan chapters.
Cotton’s letter aknowledges that “perhaps the SPLC was founded for noble purposes and decades ago performed some good work,” but continues, “what is left of the SPLC is no longer operating in a manner consistent with IRS guidelines and applicable law.”
Contrary to its name, the Southern Poverty Law Center has an endowment of more than $700 million and compensates its leaders handsomely. In addition, the organization possesses more than $30 million in offshore accounts, according to IRS filings.
Federal authorities may also seek to investigate the SPLC’s troubling ties to Antifa, the loosely-organized movement of far-left agitators that President Donald Trump recently declared a domestic terrorist group.
This article originally appeared at The Daily Signal.
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