A new episode of the Insider podcast is now out. Preet Bharara and Joyce Vance discuss:
– The federal charges filed against the Southern Poverty Law Center alleging they defrauded donors by funding white supremacist groups;
– The apparent attempted assassination of President Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner and the charges filed; and
– DOJ’s decision to drop the investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
A NOTE FROM THE PRODUCER
Claudia Hernández is a Producer of the Stay Tuned with Preet and Insider podcasts.
Why is a civil rights organization being accused of funding white supremacist groups?
On a new episode of the Insider podcast, Preet Bharara and Joyce Vance break down the federal charges filed by the Justice Department against the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are facing eleven counts of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The DOJ’s argument rests on their allegation that the SPLC defrauded donors by paying informants who took part in activities that perpetuated racist extremism. The indictment alleges: “Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Alliance. The SPLC’s paid informants (“field sources”) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.”
Joyce: “There’s plenty of hate. There is plenty of white supremacist organization happening in this country. The notion that the SPLC had to somehow manufacture it so that they would have work to do is just ludicrous. There’s so many just deep flaws in this indictment and frankly in many ways it’s very sloppy.”
The idea of using paid informants is not new. In fact, as Preet explains, many government agencies, like the DEA, the FBI, and the NYPD, have long paid confidential informants to uncover information used to take down drug-trafficking rings, for example.
Preet: “No one has ever argued that that’s just an opportunity for the DEA to make work for itself or that it was actually overall funding and supporting drug trafficking. The point is to find a mode of entry into the bad organization so that there’s sufficient evidence to take the organization down…It was a utilitarian strategy that is adopted by private actors and certainly, as I’ve said, by government actors every fricking day of the week.”
And without donors willing to cooperate with the government, the charges themselves will be difficult to prove in a court of law.
Joyce: “The whole idea that the government is going to find donors who will come in and say that they felt defrauded by this is ludicrous.”
Preet: “It’d be interesting to know if [the government] avoided generating exculpatory evidence by not interviewing donors who would say, ‘Yeah, that’s smart and it’s strategic and, more power to them. I defer to them on how they’re going to cancel hate in this country. That’s their job and I felt obliged to give them money for that purpose.’”
Listen to the episode and comment below with your thoughts and questions. Thank you for being a member of our community here on Substack. If you’re not yet a paying subscriber, you can now listen to a free excerpt from the show. For access to the full analysis, upgrade your subscription.
Stay Informed,
Claudia
