The Trump administration has launched a legal attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), raising questions about the future of other nonprofits at odds with the president.
The center pleaded not guilty Thursday in an unusual case, one that accuses the SPLC of turning its back on its very mission: using a now-defunct informant program to funnel money to the hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) it spent decades fighting.
It’s a claim the SPLC strongly denies — one it says is “not even supported by or contained in the indictment itself.” It also has accused prosecutors of misleading the grand jury to gain an indictment.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sees the prosecution as a new wave in a long line of cases targeting civil society, an effort he said began with law firms and universities.