The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate, Part II

No, you can go first. Yeah, you can go first. You can go first. Committee will come to order without objection. The chair has authorized a clear recess at any time. We welcome everyone to today's hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mister Nels, to lead us all on the pledge. Please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. We'll start with opening statements. The Chair now recogni recognize himself for an opening statement. It's always worse than we thought. The one thing we get wrong when we start these investigations, when we start this oversight, is it's always worse than we thought. We now have the superseding indictment from the Justice Department. It wasn't three million dollars that they were paying these field sources. It was actually four million dollars the Southern Poverty Law Center paid to field sources. And they didn't just pay them to foam into hate, they told their donors they were fighting. They actually dated them. That's right, Southern Poverty Law Center employee was in a romantic relationship with field source number nine, a member of the racist National Alliance. This SPLC employee, who was supposed to be dismantling hate groups with the intelligence project, was dating the field source that they were paying, and in fact, they had a joint bank account. Wow. And guess what the SPLC paid this individual? one point two million dollars to again create and foment the hate they told their donors they were fighting. Now it gets worse. An individual who led the Nationalist Socialist Party, a faction of the Aryan nations, reached out to SPLC. He wanted out. He wanted help in leaving this racist group. And what'd the SPLC do? They said, " No, no, no. Stay in the group." we'll pay you a monthly salary, we'll reimburse you for hosting rallies, purchasing racist materials. Of course, that was field source number thirty. How about F thirty seven, field source thirty seven? This person's the one who coordinated transportation and attended the twenty seventeen rally in Charlottesville. The Southern Party Law Center paid him three hundred thousand dollars. to the guy who helped put together the event where a young lady was killed. F twenty-seven. He was paid three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. What'd he do? He ran the Aryan Nations Motorcycle Club. F forty-three, president of some crazy group, was previously convicted of cross burning, but the SPLC thought he was worth nineteen thousand dollars of their donors' money. Again, all told, four million dollars to manufacture hate. We said this last hearing. I still remember Rahm Emanuel saying, oh, I'm talking about Democrats, never let a crisis go to waste. The SPLC took it a step further. They created the crisis. They manufactured the crisis. And by so doing, they became the standard, the source for determining who is a hate group. They labeled F- the Family Research Council a hate group. Moms for Liberty was labeled a hate group. USA labeled a hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom, even though they argued sixteen ca- multiple cases, won sixteen cases in front of the Supreme Court, they were labeled a hate group, but never Jane's Revenge, never the group who vandalized Christ's pregnancy centers, churches in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, they never got labeled. And the Biden Justice Department helped make them the standard. This is probably the part that bothers me, I think bothers most people the most. They helped make the Southern Poverty the l- the standard in evaluating who's a hate group, who isn't. Because they consulted with them, they had quarterly meetings, the Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco, quarterly met with SPLC. They would give SPLC any information they had, the Justice Department, the FBI had, they'd give it to them first. They even used them to train prosecutors. And of course we know what it resulted in. the now famous memorandum from the FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, where the FBI said, if you're a pro-life Catholic, you're an extremist. And of course, who did they cite for that? You guessed it, the Southern Poverty Law Center. Southern Poverty Law Center became part of the weaponized Garland Biden Justice Department. Now here's what's interesting. The Biden DOJ knew all about this scam that they were running.

Mm.

They knew the SPLC was doing this,

Mm.

but they didn't pursue the case, they dropped the case. Because when you meet with them, when you consult with them, when you have them train your prosecutors, you're not gonna prosecute them. Nope, you're not gonna do it cuz it's too valuable politically. And here's the scary part. And I'm sure we'll have questions from Mister Fair later on about this. Here's the scary part. It all worked. Field Source thirty-seven, the guy at the Charlottesville rally, helped plan that rally, coordinate transportation there, was paid to attend. After the event, again, after the event where a lady was killed, the Southern Poverty Law Center almost tripled their income. Fifty-one million to a hundred and thirty-three million. After they were coordinated hate that took place at that crazy rally. You run a scam, you become the standard, you don't get prosecuted, and you make a ton of money. They got eight hundred million assets, seven hundred million in an endowment. Such a deal. And they would have gotten away with it, but for the oversight of Congress, and more importantly, the work of the Justice Department. So God bless the Attorney General and the work him and his team are doing. And we look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and asking them questions. And with that, I would yield to the ranking member for an opening statement.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to our witnesses. Created in nineteen seventy-one and headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama. Created in nineteen seventy-one, headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama. The Southern Poverty Law Center is one of America's leading civil rights groups. It fights for voting rights throughout the South, economic justice, In criminal justice reform, like every major civil rights group in our history, it's been subjected to serious white supremacist violence. Its leaders have been threatened and attacked since its founding, and SPLC headquarters were fire-bombed in nineteen eighty-three by members of the Ku Klux Klan who were convicted of conspiracy in federal court. After this attack and escalating racial terror, the SPLC added to its work a focus on the Klan and neo-Nazi groups and other purveyors of hate, violence, and white supremacy. In nineteen eighty eight, the SPLC litigated against the southern whites of the Ku Klux Klan, the southern white knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and drove them into bankruptcy, winning a million dollar damages verdict on behalf of more than fifty peaceful, civil rights marchers in Forsyth County, Georgia, who had been savagely attacked and injured by the Klan. In two thousand nineteen it brought a fourteen million dollar judgment and won it the neo-Nazi founder of the Daily Stormer for orchestrating an anti-semitic troll storm harassment campaign consisting of more than seven hundred death threats and vile abuse against a Jewish woman and her family. The SPLC has defended the rights of anyone and everyone targeted for hate, violence, oppression and murder. Today it's under attack by the Trump administration and MAGA. Like the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, the great legislative achievement of the modern civil rights movement, now dismantled by the Roberts court, the SPLC is an enduring institutional beacon of hope for millions of people seeking to create a more perfect union. The Trump administration is thus naturally trying to tear it down. I've heard three main arguments for this astonishing crusade. The first is that the age of racism and white supremacy, violence is over. in the twenty-first century. And so the SPLC's work is unnecessary. Well, this is plainly ridiculous. We live in an age of resurgent racial injustice, profound economic inequality, and relentless assault on the right to vote. Racist violence still permeates our society. In recent memory, avowed racists and white supremacists have killed twenty-three people in the El Paso Walmart massacre, eleven people worshiping at the Tree of Life synagogue, and the worst anti- Semitic attack in American history. Ten people who were killed shopping for groceries in the Buffalo supermarket massacre. Nine worshiping parishioners were gunned down at the Mother Emanuel church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, and eight people were killed at the Atlanta spa shootings. To name just five examples out of thousands, in twenty twenty four alone, the FBI recorded nearly twelve thousand hate crime episodes. in our country. Just a few weeks ago, three fathers died defending their mosque and a hundred and forty children at worship services in San Diego against two fanatical white supremacist teenagers jacked up on white great replacement theory and far-right Neo-Nazi ideology, who took their own lives tragically after the attack. But here's the second argument they use. They say, " Well, even if there's all this violence that we're engulfed in, the Southern Poverty Law Center itself is responsible for the violence that we see around us." The basis for this outlandish claim is that for decades, at least since the nineteen nineties, the S. B. L. C. has infiltrated and investigated the Klan, neo-Nazis, and other groups by paying informants who go undercover. The purpose of these operations is obviously to derail and prevent white supremacist hate crimes and actions, both the kinds of hate crimes and shooting sprees we see all around us, but even more massive terrorist attacks like the Oklahoma City federal building bombing which took the lives of a hundred and sixty-eight Americans, many of them children, who were in a daycare center when the white nationalists unleashed their terrorism on the people of Oklahoma. In the course of their work to investigate, the extreme, right? The SPLC has worked closely with the FBI for decades and turned over to the Bureau, voluminous information, tips and leads from their field surface sources for further investigation, criminal arrest and prosecution. In two thousand seventeen, the FBI listed the SPLC as one of its partners on its web site, where it remained for eight or nine years before this administration. There's nothing new about that work. But now Todd Blanch and the Trump DOJ in Alabama have twisted and corrupted this proud history of cooperation with law enforcement to bring an eleven count criminal indictment against the LS- SPLC claiming that it was defrauding its own donors. This is amazing given not only that the S- SPLC donors and supporters cherish and prize the group precisely for its ability to get information in this way, to stop hate crimes, but also incredible because the FBI itself uses the exact same practices for its own investigative work, spending in the neighborhood of not three or four million dollars on undercover informants but more than forty million dollars a year on undercover informants there's nothing illegal about that SPLC donors are not claiming fraud. They were proud to support this program. Even the extremist groups themselves understood they were being infiltrated and we're constantly looking for the traitors, the spies. Well, my friends, we know what a real fraud looks like. Consider a fraud called Trump University, a scam from top to bottom where nine thousand victims joined three different class action lawsuits to complain about the fact that they were cheated out of thousands of dollars for a university that existed in name only without a real curriculum, without real professors, without an actual campus or any way to keep uh their extravagant and seductive promises. To their students, the thousands of outraged victims were not silent. They came forward to complain and they won a twenty-five million dollar settlement against Donald Trump and the purveyors of this fraud. One former instructor at Trump University said it, quote, " preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money." Another former instructor said the institution was " a total lie." That's what real fraud looks like. What have the SPLC's donors done in light of this criminal indictment? They've not lined up to file class action suits or to denounce the SPLC. They continue to support the SPLC's works. Donations to the organization have gone up since this fraudulent indictment was brought down by the Trump administration. Well, the final complaint I've heard from members of this committee speaking on behalf of certain groups who take exception uh to being called hate groups by the SPLC. So they're mad that certain groups that they like are called hate groups. And I can appreciate why people don't wanna be called a hate group. Um, I don't like a lot of things that are said about me and the groups that I like. Stephen Miller said the Democrat Party is not a political party, it's a domestic extremist organization. I don't like that. Kristi Noem called Alex Prettie and Renee Goode law abiding citizens shot down by ice, domestic terrorists. Donald Trump said that democratic donors like George Soros and Reid Hoffman were funding a conspiracy for domestic terrorists. Look, under our first amendment, love and hate exist in the eye of the beholder. Donald Trump has repeatedly said that January sixth was a day of love, when our police officers were bathed in hugs and kisses from the Proud Boys and the insurrectionists. For most of us who lived through that violent insurrection, it wasn't a day of love, it was a day of hatred and sickening violence. But that's the great thing about the First Amendment. It's up to you. You can say whatever you want. If you don't like the fact that someone's called you a hate group, then you get up and then you rebut them, you denounce them. I've heard Chairman Jordan say it a dozen times in our hearings, and I agree with him. The proper response to speech you don't like is counter-speech, not government prosecution. not government censorship. Counterpose honest speech to dishonest speech, the truth to the lies. Let the public figure it out. Whatever happens, I disagree with everything you say, but I will stand with my life for your right to say it. We need less vendetta and more Voltaire. All of this is a disgrace. When DOJ was founded in eighteen seventy, a hundred and fifty-six years ago, it was to protect the newly freed African Americans against the Ku Klux Klan, which was rampaging violence throughout the South. Todd Blanch has capsized DOJ's commitment to the rights of all and disgraced the department he has directed DOJ to savage the SPLC while he does everything in his power with the president to aid and abet the right-wing extremists who commit acts of violence against racial minorities. Just two weeks after becoming acting AG, he moved to vacate the criminal convictions of the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy. They were convicted and sentenced to jail for many, many years. Seditious conspiracy means working to overthrow the government of the United States. These were crimes so toxic that President Trump wouldn't even pardon them when he was pardoning en masse more than sixteen hundred other cop-beating racist January Six rioters and insurrectionists. These are the people that the DOJ now protects. And now, Todd Blanch wants to create a one point seven seven six billion dollar taxpayer funded slush fund to turn the January six foot soldiers into MAGA millionaires. And while Blanch was at it, he signed an outrageous super pardon to give not just Donald Trump, but his entire family and all their businesses complete and total immunity from any investigation, audit, lawsuit, or prosecution by any federal agency for any criminal or civil violation against the United States up until this point. And while systematically firing prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on the January sixth investigation, the largest criminal probe in American history, Trump and Blanch are putting January sixth rioters, violent extremists, and their closest allies in key positions throughout the DOJ, like Jared Wise, who urged rioters to kill police officers on January sixth. Like Ed Martin, who defended violent cop beaters both as a defense attorney and a federal prosecutor. He's been given free reign now as DOJ's partner attorney despite his long history of consorting with neo-Nazis. Donald Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia, three years out of law school, to run the ethics watchdog office of the special counsel and stood by him after it was revealed that he admitted to having quote " a bit of a Nazi streak streak." in him, and he wrote that the Martin Alf- Martin Luther King holiday should be tossed into the seventh circle of hell. The Department of Defense hired Elias Irizarry, an unqualified inexperienced twenty-four year old Trump loyalist and convicted J six rioter who was pardoned by the president to work on irregular warfare, and counterterrorism, and so on. Uh, we understand uh that the extremist swamp that gave rise to this criminal indictment against the SPLC is just one more Orwellian attack on the civil rights movement and one more Kafkaesque prosecution designed to shame and ensnare the righteous and acquit and absolve the guilty. It is a tissue of lies that will join the pantheon of debunked fraudulent prosecutions that DOJ has been excoriated for by dozens of judges across the land, appointed by all different Presidents, a few weeks ago a federal judge in Rhode Island, Judge McElroy, called the government's submissions in a case misleading, if not utterly false. Another judge said that DOJ attorneys had submitted a patently false allegation to the court. Another judge rejected administration officials' testimony as disingenuous, squalid, and dishonorable. And another court found the administration had provided a highly misleading, if not intentionally false, sworn desic- declaration so disingenuous that the court is left with little confidence that the United States can be trusted to tell the truth about anything. I predict it will not be long before another federal judge casts this obscene prosecution to the winds. I'm only sorry the great name of the House Judiciary Committee has now been made an accomplice to this fraud against the court in the country. I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.

The gentleman yields back. And I think We're part of the fraud. I think the Southern Poverty Law Center was defrauding their donors. Without objection, all other opening statements will be included in the record. Today's witnesses, Doctor Alveda King is the chair of the American Dream Initiative at the American First Policy Institute. She is the daughter of civil rights activist, Reverend A. D. King and the niece of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. She is the founder of Speak for Life, an organization that advocates for the sanctity and dignity of human life. Mister Brian Fair is the interim CEO and president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. He previously served as the chairman the best PLC's Board of Directors. Mister Ryan Bangert is the Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Special Counsel to the President at the Alliance Defending Freedom. He previously served in the office of the Texas Attorney General and was a litigation partner at Baker Botts LLP. And Professor Mary McCord is a visiting professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center she previously served in numerous roles in the Department of Justice we welcome our witnesses and thank them for appearing today. We'll begin by swearing you in. You know how this works. Would you please rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge information belief, so help you God. The records show that the witnesses uh have answered in the affirmative. Thank you. Please be seated. Please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes. We're just gonna

Good morning, Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Raskin, members of the committee. Last July I took on a one year leave from teaching to become the Interim Head of the Southern Public Law Center. So my testimony today will be one of my last official acts in this role. It has been one of the greatest honors of my life to work alongside the talented, dedicated and principled SPLC staff. For fifty-five years, with the support of generous donors who appreciate our work, the SPLC has fought racial terror, white supremacy, and other forms of discrimination and hate, seeking to build and defend a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive. That was the goal of the civil rights movement, and it is our mission. We are known for exposing and dismantling extremist hate groups. We took on the United Clans of America, whose hateful violence killed four little girls in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, and we soothed them out of existence. In the decades since, hate has continued, but so have our efforts to expose it through litigation, policy, research, and education. We fight for the underdog, the poor, the unhoused, the hungry, the incarcerated, the disenfranchised, the immigrant, the outcast, the vilified. Many groups, and some in this room, have misrepresented our work, including our confidential informant program, repeating various false allegations. Some say we've lost our way. That's false. We've never lost our North Star, a fair and just society for every person. All our programs advance that mission. Our work saves lives. It bec- but it comes at a price. Since our earliest days, we've been targeted by those who oppose our mission. Our office was fire-bombed. Our staff threatened. Our leaders, the target of assassination. We know political violence. We unequivocally condemn it. However, despite the danger, we will not stop exposing hate. This morning we released our annual Year in Hate and Extremism report. It chronicles how the hard right has weaponized the levers of government to weaken the political and economic power of nonwhites, immigrants, women, the LGBTQ plus community, religious minorities, and the poor. The forces turning back hard-won progress against discrimination are unrelenting, and unashamed. the SPLC, alongside many civil rights groups and democracy defenders, is resisting them. To American people of good will, especially those left out of the American promise, your civic participation matters now more than any time since the civil rights movement. Today I'm joined by several people who inspire our work. First, Miss Karen Fenn and her son, Aaron, are here. Aaron faced expulsion from school for alleged conduct that was a manifestation of his disability. Aaron lives with autism, and federal law prohibits schools from excluding students from behaviors connected to their disabilities. We sued, and with his mother's courage and dedication and his perseverance, Aaron graduated from that school in twenty twenty three. Miss Tanya Gersh is also here. A Jewish Montana mom, Gersh and her family became the target of relentless anti-semitic harassment from white nationalists, including threatening phone calls where all that could be heard on the line was gunshots. With the center's help, Gersh won a fourteen million dollar judgment against the neo-Nazi who incited her harassers. We stand with Karen, Erin, Tanya, and thousands we protect every day. Fenny Lou Hamer said, Nobody's free until everybody's free. The SPLC will continue our constitutionally protected work to ensure everyone in this country is treated with dignity, lives lives free of discrimination, and enjoys liberty and opportunity to thrive. These promises of our democracy are not self-executing. They require our collective vig- vigilance. And we will continue to fend to defend them when they come under attack. Finally, I must note that I'm constrained in answering some questions today, because they may touch on matters involving pending criminal litigation against the SPLC, or conversations that I've had with counsel. Frankly, this constraint is a result of the majority's injecting itself into a pending criminal matter three days after it was filed, and then refusing our request to delay this hearing until that ca- case is resolved. With that, I will answer what I can. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Fair. I would just point out this committee has had hearings on the activities of the SPLC prior to the indictment uh from the Justice Department. We thank you for your statement. Uh, Doctor King, you are now uh recognized for five minutes.

Mister Chairman, Ranking Member, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to testify today. I was born on January twenty-second, nineteen fifty-one, not with a silver spoon in my mouth, but singing amazing grace and pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. In other words, I was born into a Christian family, led by Baptist preachers and men and women who loved God, believed in God, proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ, and embraced the truth found in Acts seventeen twenty-six. And of one blood, God made every nation of people to dwell on the face of the earth. I was taught from birth to love, to repent, to forgive, to trust God. and to love my fellow brothers and sisters. Human dignity is a creed of our family, the King family legacy. My uncle, Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, did not dedicate his life to dividing people into categories of oppressor and oppressed. He dedicated his life to bringing people together under the truth that every person bears the image of God. I come before you today not in anger, but in deep concern. I am not sure anyone can fully grasp the emotions of a young girl, who grew up in a family that sacrificed so much for justice and reconciliation, only to spend much of her adult life being watched, shadowed, criticized, and even threatened because she believes in God, in Jesus Christ, in the sanctity of life, and in the American dream. My family legacy reflects the very truth that America is strongest when we recognize our common humanity. My grandf- mother's family came from the west coast of Africa. My grandfather's family came from Ireland. My mother's family included Cherokee roots. I have spent my entire life living the reality that America is not a collection of competing tribes. America is one people under God. That is why I am troubled by the conduct and messaging of organizations that claim to fight hatred while profiteering from division. Recent allegations reportedly contained in a federal Um, superseding indictment raised serious questions about the southern poverty law center's activities. Individuals associated with organizations the SPLC itself labeled as extremists or hate groups allegedly received substantial payments over many years. The indictment shares of paid payments totaling hundreds of thousands and in some cases more than a million dollars to sources connected to white supremacist, neo-nazi, and clou-clucks-can organizations. Those allegations deserve careful examination. They reveal a troubling contradiction. Americas who faithfully donate their hard-earned money, many of them senior citizens like me, who sincerely want to combat racism and hatred, deserve transparency and accountability about how those funds are being used. America does not need more manufactured, racial, We do need more labels with the sole int- do not need more labels with the sole intention to drive us apart. We do not need more lists that place citizens under suspicion because they hold sincere beliefs about faith, family, life, or public policy. I know myself about being labeled. Let me be clear. I reject racism. I reject hatred. I reject white supremacy. I reject any ideal ideology that seeks to elevate one group of people above another. But I also reject the notion that Americans who hold traditional Christian beliefs should be treated as threats or terrorists, simply because we disagree with a prevailing um a prevailing political thought. Today, I still have a dream. I dream that one day we will move beyond black power and white power, and embrace God's power and human dignity. I dream that Americas will one day see each other not as enemies but as neighbors. I dream that we will hear each other, see each other, and recognize that every human life has value from the womb to the tomb and beyond. We are, as scripture teaches, as science testified, one blood, one human race. And if we remember that truth, we can build a future worthy of the sacrifices made

Thank you. God bless you. Well done. Uh, Mr. Banger, you are recognized for five minutes.

Uh, thank you, Chairman Jordan, Rinko, member Raskin, members of the committee, for the opportunity to testify before you today. Over fifty years ago, the SPLC was founded to fight the scourge of racism, but the SPLC has drifted from that founding purpose. The indictment alleges that the SPLC deceived owners into funding the racist groups it claimed to fight. But beyond these shocking allegations of hypocrisy lies a broader story, how the SPLC tarred mainstream conservative organizations as hate groups, and then relentlessly sought to silence those groups by persuading America's leading financial and technology firms to exclude them from the marketplace. ADF is one of those organizations. We've been on the SPLC's hate map since twenty sixteen, which is odd, given that we reject racism. Our Christian faith teaches that all are created to equal and all are made in the image of God. But it makes sense when you understand today's SPLC, and the words of some, as a political hit operation. The SPLC has branded ADF and others like us as hate groups, solely because it disagrees with our work, grounded in our religious conviction on behalf of children told by the medical establishment to disfigure and permanently mutilate their bodies, on behalf of the most vulnerable among us, both those unborn and those at the end of life. Our advocacy for these mainstream positions has repeatedly led us to the US Supreme Court, where we have secured eighteen victories since twenty eleven, including two more cases under submission today. In fact, the SPLC even quietly filed an amicus brief supporting one of ADF's Supreme Court wins on behalf of freedom of association and donor privacy. But the SPLC cannot abide our work on behalf of the vulnerable, parents, children, and the unborn. So it has slandered ADF and other groups like us as hate groups, and has sought to lo- and sought to lock us out of the public square. The SPLC began targeting mainstream Christian and conservative organizations by adding them to their hate m- hate map in twenty ten. Seven years later, the SPLC's fundraising skyrocketed in response to the notorious Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. But this wasn't a stroke of good luck. The superseding indictment alleges that the SPLC funded and supported one of its ringleaders. In the immediate aftermath of Charlottesville, the SPLC received large donations or commitments from leading firms and personalities, including JP Morgan Chase, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and even Tim Cook at Apple. In twenty eighteen it launched a coalition of left-wing organizations called Change the Terms. They understood that you don't have to win a debate with your opponents if they're invisible. So the coalition targeted critical banking, payment processing, donor advisory, technology, and digital communications infrastructure. It embedded the SPLC within that infrastructure of corporate decision-making allowing it to influence terms of engagement, flag business partners, and bully corporations into compliance. In short, the SPLC mobilized corporate America to crush the voices of mainstream conservative organizations. The Biden year saw the SPLC deepen its presence in America's political and corporate infrastructure. The Biden DOJ and White House met regularly with SPLC officials. Amazon used the SPLC to blackball groups from its Amazon Smile giving program. So did the employee charitable giving platform Benevity, which serves nearly a quarter of the Fortune one thousand. ADF saw tangible impacts. We lost access to the Amazon Smile program, non-profit pricing from large technology providers like Microsoft, Adobe, and Intuit. Web hosting on the Pantheon platform and access to donor advised funds at Fidelity. A partisan political organization like the SPLC should never have been allowed to function as an unaccountable private gatekeeper to critical financial technology and communication services. And corporations should never have accepted the word of an organization that is itself severely compromised. In addition to standing indicted today, the SPLC has paid millions in settlements for defamation. Its co-founder and president left in twenty nineteen amid staff reports of a systemic culture of racism and sexism. It received an F from Charity Navigator for hoarding donor money. to the tune of more than eight hundred million dollars, much of it offshore. Former employees have said that the SPLC is little more than a highly profitable scam. The time has come to uproot the SPLC from America's financial and technology infrastructure. And Congress can help. Investigations of the SPLC can reach beyond the indictment to examine the SPLC's relationships with financial institutions, technology companies, and digital communications platforms. Moreover, Congress can pass legislation barring federally insured financial institutions from delegating decision-making to private entities that discriminate based on First Amendment protected activity. These would be critical steps toward dismantling the SPLC's shadow censorship regime. We thank the committee for its interest in doing so.

Thank you, Mister B- Bangert, uh, Miss- uh, Professor, excuse me, Professor McCord, you're recognized.

Members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify. The Department of Justice should not use its power as a weapon against people and organizations disliked by the president. No one has said this better than former US Supreme Court Justice and US Attorney General Robert Jackson in his nineteen forty speech, the federal prosecutor. He said, "The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in America. The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial. If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. It is in this realm, in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of the prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself. What Justice Jackson warned about has come to past. The DOJ has initiated fraud investigations in against political enemies, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, and former Chair Jerome Powell, and Senator Adam Schiff. And at the same time, the president has granted clemency to more than seventy allies, donors, and others convicted of hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud across his two terms, often after receiving financial or other benefits from them. And he, along with his Attorney General nominee, have orchestrated a fraud on the court, settling the president's collusive lawsuit against the IRS, in which he, his family members, and his businesses all received from the Justice Department an effective pardon, from criminal and civil, investigations, audits, claims, and prosecutions by any federal department or agency on any subject based on anything that could have been initiated as to the date of the settlement, known or unknown. The so-called settlement came after a federal judge ordered briefing on whether there was actual adversity between the parties, a constitutional requirement for a lawsuit. This one-sided use of prosecutorial power extends to the President's National Security Presidential Memorandum seven. Using the domestic terrorism label, it mandates that federal government, in- cue including the DOJ, use every tool in its toolbox to target groups with ideologies this administration perceives as, quote, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, extremism on migration, race and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. NSPM seven states that the groups and entities perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes. It relies for support on the murder of Charlie Kirk, assassination attempts against the president, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the so-called riots in uh in protest of ICE activity. And although murders and threats of violence are reprehensible and illegal, the examples do not justify the stark lack of parity in NSPM seven's treatment of supposedly dangerous ideologies. There is no mention in NSPM seven of the politically motivated murders of Minnesota Democratic Legislator M- M- Melissa Hortman and her husband or the mass shootings committed in Buffalo, New York, El Paso, Texas, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by white supremacists who justified their violence based on the great replacement theory. The one-sided memorandum not only lacks legitimacy, it raises the stakes for organizations that hold views the administration dislikes. It has the strong potential to lead to the discriminatory targeting of organizations based on the exercise of First Amendment rights. Within months of of then-Attorney General Pan Boundary's December twenty twenty-five memo reminding prosecutors of the many federal criminal provisions that might be used in implementing NSPM seven the SPLC was indicted. SPLC has for decades spoken out against racial violence, sued to protect civil rights and dismantle hate groups, and worked cooperatively with law enforcement. Commenting on the charges the president called SPLC one of the greatest political scams in American history. I'm not here to discuss the substance of the charges against SPLC, which is being ably defended in court, but the targeting of the organization harkens the very danger Justice Jackson warned about, that law enforcement becomes personal and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself. Thank you.

Thank you, Professor. Uh, we will now uh move to five minute questions. Uh, the chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mister Reiss.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, uh, Professor McCord, I congratulate you on your ad hominem attacks on the president and your deflecting any part of answers as to the nature of this hearing. Your absence of that shows a great deal about how you have a- you have no answers for our questions but you have answers for your own party persuasion. Mister uh, Bangert, I apologize in advance, uh, I'm gonna focus a little bit over here, but it's not because you haven't, your organization hasn't been uh the subject of the attacks by uh Mister Fair's organization uh for what is now a decade and a half. Dr. King, I'll - I'll start with you. You wear a cross here today. You spoke of God and Jesus Christ, your deep faith, and the conviction that comes with that faith as to how, uh, a just government and a people should act. Is that a fair statement of who you are?

The statement of who I am is just a seventy-five year old woman who has experienced so much I have been personally flagged by SPLC and I have been on a domestic terrorist list, interestingly enough, for much of my life.

Well, uh, Doctor King, that's the nature of the question. Is that because of who you are, because of your faith, because you have championed the teachings of your father and your uncle? Uh, yesterday I led a small trip into the capital where the uh rotunda has virtually only presidents of the United States. other than Doctor King. Is it in fact his teachings and the teachings of people like that, that you follow, that has caused you to be so labeled?

I believe that these attacks against me and others are not because only of my faith, certainly because of my faith, absolutely. My uncle, Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, once said that the law may not make you love me, but it can keep you from killing me. And so I believe that many of us are persecuted,

Sadly it sadly it did not.

uh, because of our faith and our beliefs. I think it's a little unfair because I say life from the womb to the tomb and beyond, that I'm on a domestic terrorist list. I think that's unfair.

Well, you choo you join a a a group of of faithful people, as Mister Bangert mentioned, uh, tend to tend to be what we'd call center right leading. You knew Charlie Kirk and his work, didn't you?

I did know Charlie Kirk.

And his work, like your work, was about love, people getting along, but it was also about teaching of - of the benefits of faith, wasn't it?

I was able to make some peace with Charlie before he was killed, cuz he said some bad things about my uncle. I didn't like it. I was upset and I said, Charlie, but one of the last things Charlie said to an African-American young man, he says, our DNA makes us the same, not this skin. Charlie actually said that. And he publicly apologized at a meeting where I was. So, Charlie was not an angel. I'm definitely not an angel. President Trump, Biden, Obama. Angels, please raise your hand right now. If you're out there, I need to meet you. However, it's misguided compassion that brings us here today. It is misguided compassion that puts me on our domestic terrorist list. I think that is very unfair. And that, and you know, old people like me, giving money to SPLC and then calling me later, oh my God, they believe in, it's okay to cut a boy's penis off? I was like, seems like they spending a little money to do that. And people are totally shocked. I hope people will take the medicine and come on and admit that they are funding some things. They might be doing some good stuff. But look at like this, I have a dog and I'm making some brownies. And they, they chocolate. The dog poops some brown stuff. I put a little secret ingredient in there. And I put it in my brownies and the people get worms. It's not right. It's just not right.

Thank you, Doctor King. Mister Fair, I don't want you to be left out of this conversation. Uh, you have, your organization has labeled Doctor King and Charlie Kirk and others. Do you regret that? Will you recant it? Or are you going to double down and say that these people, including the martyred Charlie Kirk, in fact somehow deserve to be on your hate list for their constantly talking about bringing people together talking about the teachings of the Bible and the like.

Congressman Issa, uh, as I said in my statement

Now wait a second, no, no. I heard your statement.

Well

I only want an answer to your question in the eleven seconds left.

Well

Are you going to recant yes or no, and if you're not going to, please don't tell me, it's because now you're under charges. Your organization did it as much as sixteen years ago. Will you take back any part of that or is your hate list stand as your position of your organization as its head today?

The SPLC will continue to expose hate and extremism.

Okay, we'll take that as the list stands. Mister Chairman, I'd ask unanimous consent

Gentleman can do a unanimous consent.

Thank you, that uh an admission from a submission from the Heartbeat International to for today's hearing be placed in the record

objection

that a uh a message uh con- particularly from uh it's entitled the truth about the spl c from the family research council be placed in the record

objection

and lastly mister spea- mister chairman um for this hearing too a statement from the executive director's office of the center for immigration studies be placed in the record thank you i yield back

without objection gentleman yields back chair now recognizes the gentleman from maryland

Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Ms. McCourt, our colleagues invoked the fact that the SPLC had an informant in a white nationalist group at the infamous Unite the Right rally in August of two thousand seventeen in Charlottesville as some kind of indictment of the SPLC but didn't that SPLC informant, uh, create the information that allowed the SPLC to send three different FBI field offices a forty-five page memorandum warning of planned violence and the potential for violence at this extremist uh confab?

That that is the facts that have been represented in court.

M- Mister Fair, is it true that the SPLC sent a memo based on that informant's work to three different FBI field offices?

Yes, it is.

Okay, um the the chairman um spoke with some indignation about the fact that there were three million or four million dollars uh spent giving to undercover informants to try to expose the work of the extremist groups, uh, as in Charlottesville in two thousand seventeen, where Heather Heyer was killed by a fanatic racist. Um, how does, uh, I'm just curious how the, the members of the panel feel about this proposed one point seven seven six billion dollar political slush fund set up for the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and other convicted criminals and rioters. from January sixth. Do you think that that fund should be shut down in any other similar fund, Mister Fair?