Thursday on FNC’s “Hannity,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, discussed the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the allegation that it was bankrolling so-called extremists it was supposedly opposed to.
HANNITY: All right, turning now to another legal matter. The Department of Justice has secured a superseding indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center containing the details of even more alleged fraud committed by the center against its own donors and banks. According to this new indictment, a Southern Poverty Law Center employee was actually dating an informant inside a white supremacist group, all while the center paid that same informant over a million dollars in donor money. And when two members of the KKK reached out to the law center, hoping to take advantage of a program that helped people leave extremist groups, well, the law center paid them to stay in the KKK instead.
All told, the law center paid out $4 million, over $4 million of their own donors’ money to the very extremists that they claim to be fighting, all using a variety of shell companies, which is a practice in the law. I believe they call that wire fraud.
Here with reaction is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, is with us.
I almost find this impossible to believe.
JORDAN: Yeah.
HANNITY: But why does nothing surprise me anymore?
JORDAN: No, it’s like every other investigation we’ve ever looked at, Sean. The only thing we get wrong is it’s always worse than we thought.
And here you had people trying to get out of a hate group and the Southern Poverty Law Center says, “No, no, no. Stay in, create more hate, and we’ll pay you. And oh, by the way, we’re not going to tell our donors. We’re going to keep letting them thinking — let them think that we’re fighting it all the way.” I mean, this is how ridiculous it was.
But for me, the biggest takeaway is the fact that the Biden White House and the Biden Justice Department helped make the Southern Poverty Law Center the standard. They met with them every quarter. Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general, sat down with them. They helped when Southern Poverty Law Center created the hate group, the Biden Justice Department used that.
In fact, in the now famous Catholic memorandum from the Biden FBI where they say, “If you’re a pro-life Catholic, you’re an extremist”, guess who they cited, Sean? The Southern Poverty Law Center.
So, they helped make them the standard when in fact it was all a scam. That’s how ridiculous and wrong this is.
So, God bless Todd Blanche and the work the Justice Department is doing in helping hold these people accountable.
HANNITY: All right. What do you see that they’re investigating? What are the possible crimes that are involved here?
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Of course, they’re innocent until proven guilty. Go ahead.
JORDAN: Yeah, I think they lie, you know, because they were laundering money through all these shell organization. So, I think there’s that. There’s probably some kind of bank fraud issue. There’s wire fraud issue. There’s all of this.
But there’s also the fraud they committed to their donors. I mean, they were putting the very people they were saying, “No, don’t leave. Stay in the group.”
We’re — they highlighted them on their website, “Look at this extremist, this hateful person”, while they’re paying him. So, they’re — that’s the game they were running, never telling their donors this scheme that they were up to.
Here’s the other thing I think is interesting — the Biden Justice Department knew about this. They were investigating it, but they didn’t bring the charges and I think the reason is obvious. Well, of course, you can’t charge them when you’re making them the standard when you’re working with they actually had Southern Poverty Law Center people come in and help train the prosecutors in the Biden Justice Department.
And the sad thing about all this is it worked. They almost tripled their revenue after the now famous Charlottesville rally where a person was killed and one of the guys they were paying was promoting that rally, coordinating transportation. After that rally, they almost tripled their revenue.
So, it’s great again that Todd Blanche and his team are indicting these folks and holding them accountable.
