The Trump Justice Department indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center Tuesday on an 11-count federal fraud case. It alleges the prominent civil rights organization secretly funneled more than $3 million in donor funds to paid informants embedded inside white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation and the National Alliance. The indictment, handed by a federal grand jury in Alabama, charged the organization with bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Southern Poverty Law Center rejected the charges as politically motivated, saying its informant program was used to monitor threats of violence and that the information gathered was routinely shared with local and federal law enforcement. This is the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Interim CEO Bryan Fair.

Bryan Fair: “This use of informants was necessary because we are no stranger to threats of violence. In 1983, our offices were firebombed. And in the years since, there have been countless credible threats against our staff. For decades, we engaged in unprecedented litigation to dismantle the Klan and other hate groups.”