SPLC Asks Federal Judge to Dismiss Indictment, Citing 'Vindictive Prosecution'
"This is the very definition of a vindictive prosecution. The Court should dismiss the indictment as a violation of due process," newly filed motion says.
Lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Center have asked a federal judge to dismiss the fraud and money laundering indictment of the legendary civil rights organization, calling it “the very definition of a vindictive prosecution.”
In a motion filed Tuesday, SPLC lawyers argued the recent SPLC indictment is part of “a top-down, retributive campaign” in President Donald Trump “directed his Justice Department to go after those individuals and groups he deemed his political enemies, including the SPLC. “
“To carry out the President’s directive, others in the Administration targeted the SPLC, which now faces criminal charges for exercising its First Amendment right to identify, report on, and criticize extremist hate groups,” it argues.
“The Administration has falsely accused the SPLC of being ‘anti-Christian,’ of aiding the Biden Administration’s ‘weaponization’ of the Department of Justice, of participating in political violence, and, most recently, of helping to ‘rig’ the 2020 election against President Donald Trump.”
Last month, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced that a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, had indicted the SPLC on 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
A Department of Justice news release quoted Blanche, accusing the SPLC of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” Calling SPLC a “fraudulent organization,” Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer added, “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked.”
Patel said the group had engaged “in a massive fraud operation.”
The SPLC’s motion to dismiss argues that Trump himself “publicly proclaimed the improper political motive behind the case, branding the SPLC a ‘Democrat Hoax, along with Act Blue and many others’ and claimed that when the allegations are proven ‘the 2020 Presidential Election should be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect!”
The president has also claimed the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 “was all funded by the Southern Law,” an apparent reference to the SPLC. He also asserted the SPLC funded this “total fake” event “to make me look bad.”
As I previously reported (see below), key Unite the Right organizers have emphatically denied those allegations against their long-time nemesis.
According to the motion, prosecutors “did not interview any current employees of the organization nor make any request of the SPLC’s counsel for any voluntary interviews of employees. They had already determined to seek an indictment without ever reaching out to counsel for the SPLC.”
“In fact, in the days immediately following the announcement of charges, whistleblower reports filed with congressional lawmakers accused top Justice Department officials of pressuring prosecutors to rush an indictment of the SPLC, despite significant concerns about the merits of the case,” it says.