The Southern Poverty Law Center told a federal judge Tuesday that the Justice Department’s criminal case against the organization has been tainted by political animosity on the part of President Trump and other top Republicans, and must be thrown out.
SPLC lawyers said Mr. Trump directed a “retributive campaign” to try to sideline a political opponent and federal prosecutors delivered with the case, which accuses the controversial organization of defrauding its donors and banks by using mislabeled accounts to pay informants inside extremist groups.
The organization also accused the U.S. attorney in Alabama prosecuting the case of breaking with norms by not seeking any documents from the SPLC until it had already made the decision to seek an indictment.
“These procedural irregularities show that the charges against the SPLC were a foregone conclusion based on prosecutorial vindictiveness — driven by the White House and FBI leadership’s retribution campaign — rather than the result of a good faith examination of the evidence,” the SPLC’s lawyers said.
Seven lawyers are listed on the filing, which was signed by Addy Schmitt and Abbe David Lowell, who has also represented Hunter Biden and Letitia James.
Vindictive prosecution is difficult to prove but Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant, just won a dismissal last week of the lawsuit against him after a judge sustained his allegations of vindictive prosecution.
In that case the judge said the government only brought the charges after Mr. Abrego Garcia won a court ruling ordering that he be un-deported from El Salvador, where he was wrongly sent in March 2025.
That, the judge said, amounted to vindictive prosecution of Mr. Abrego Garcia for exercising his rights.
The SPLC made a similar argument in its new filing.
“At its heart, this indictment seeks to punish the SPLC for engaging in constitutionally protected speech with which the administration disagrees,” the group’s lawyers said.
Federal prosecutors have charged the SPLC with paying off leaders of a number of anti-government extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation and the National Alliance.
SPLC says payoffs were used to get information to dismantle the groups, but the case argues they actually ended up supporting the activities, defrauding donors who gave the money.
The indictment also accuses the SPLC of misleading banks about the actual ownership of the accounts used to pay the money.
