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Southern Poverty Law Center’s interim CEO Bryan Fair claimed in a Tuesday video that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating the organization and possibly preparing criminal charges.
“Although we don’t know all the details,” Fair said in a video posted to the organization’s YouTube account, “the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”
The SPLC is a nonprofit group that has come under fire in recent years for alleged political bias. In October, FBI Director Kash Patel eliminated all ties to the organization after they labeled Turning Point USA a hate group.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Patel said in a Oct. 3 post on X.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Sept. 16, 2025, in Washington, DC (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Their so-called ‘hate map’ has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence,” he said at the time. “That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership.”
Fair pointed to that announcement as proof that the SPLC was being targeted by the Trump administration. He also cited a December hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government titled “Partisan and profitable: the SPLC’s influence on federal civil rights policy.”
Before Patel cut ties, SPLC had collaborated with the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies on their informant program, which Fair claimed was at the heart of the alleged investigation.
“We frequently shared what we learned from informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI. We did not, however, share our use of informants broadly with anyone, in order to protect the identity and safety of the informants and their families,” he said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) building seen in March 2020 in Montgomery, Alabama. (Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images)
Fair also said the SPLC no longer works with paid informants.
In May 2025, the group published an analysis of Turning Point USA as a hate group, calling it a “well-funded, hard-right organization with links to Southern Poverty Law Center-identified hard-right extremists,” and adding that its “primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists.”
On Sept. 9, one day before Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, SPLC published a newsletter that Charlie Kirk Show producer Andrew Kolvet described as an attack.
Kolvet questioned whether or not the newsletter contributed to Kirk’s death.
Charlie Kirk speaks at the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire on May 19, 2025 (Nordin Catic/Getty Images)
“Did these contribute to the assassin’s motive?” Kolvet wrote in an October post on X.
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“We may never know, but the swirl of extremist propaganda certainly played a role. The SPLC has been credibly accused of corruption, mishandling of donations, union-busting, and covering up of sexual assault by senior leadership, all while sitting on nearly $1 billion in reserves and being based in red Alabama. These are legitimate predicates for investigation. Those should happen immediately,” Kolvet concluded.
Fox News Digital contacted SPLC and the DOJ for comment but did not immediately receive a response.