Lots of People Are Lying About the SPLC Indictment: Here's the Evidence

It's almost as if the people most excited by the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center have not read the indictment--or they really don't care.

Give Donald Trump’s Justice Department credit: They were able to indict the Southern Poverty Law Center on one set of facts, while spinning a completely different yarn about the legendary civil rights organization.

And the right-wing spin machine is absolutely making stuff up.

As you will see below, that is objectively true.

Payments to informants or hate groups?

First, play very close attention to the specific allegations approved by a federal grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama. The indictment says that, over a 10-year-period, SPLC (1) “secretly funneled $3 million”… (2) to informants… (3) “associated with various violent extremist groups.”

But note the blaring graphic (above) that was displayed by Fox News: “Southern Poverty Law Center Accused of Funneling $3M+ to Extremist Groups.”

Get the difference? “To informants” versus “to extremist groups.”

Fox host Kayleigh McEnany declared that the money went “to some of the very same extremist hate groups it claims to have been fighting…