SPLC Indictment Shows Activists Ran FBI’s Domestic Terror Program
The article argues that the SPLC controversy goes beyond the indictment and reflects a broader problem: the FBI, the authors say, treated a partisan advocacy group as an intelligence partner. It claims the bureau incorporated the SPLC’s ideological framing into its threat assessments and other official outputs, leading officials to label Americans as hateful and/or potential domestic violent extremists based on that outside narrative rather than sworn evidence.
It points to the Biden administration’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” as a structural enabler, describing it as a framework that formalized public-private partnerships and relied on “non-governmental” analysis-creating what the author calls a “backdoor” for unvetted inputs into federal counterterror work. The piece says declassified planning documents confirm a mechanism for receiving and sharing domestic-terror-related analysis from non-governmental experts across government agencies.
Using the FBI’s “anti-Catholic memo” as case material, the author claims the FBI used SPLC-derived analysis to define “radical-traditionalist Catholics,” and that similar terminology appeared across many documents and was distributed to large numbers of agents and employees. The author also cites internal FBI communications suggesting concern about overreliance on SPLC designations.
Beyond document use, the article claims the FBI allowed SPLC personnel to train agents on extremism topics, which it says complicates later arguments that the SPLC role was limited or unknown. It further alleges that a shadow network may have existed, including covert financial methods, and raises questions about who taught those tradecraft methods and what federal authorities knew.
it calls for legislative and administrative remedies: banning reliance on unvetted partisan “hate lists” for investigations, requiring disclosures/labels for intelligence products derived from non-government sources, forcing declassification of SPLC-sourced work products, investigating whether other ideological groups had similar influence, and dismantling the strategy mechanism that enabled this pipeline into federal operations.
The real Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) scandal isn’t just the indictment. The deeper scandal is that the FBI used a highly partisan activist group as an unelected, unvetted intelligence wing of the federal bureaucracy. For years, the bureau didn’t just consult the SPLC. It folded the group’s ideology into its threat assessments and other work products, then used those products to brand Americans as hateful or flag them as potential domestic violent extremists.
I warned in June 2021 that the Biden administration’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” provided the blueprint for this institutional capture. Specifically, Pillar 1 of the strategy formalized public-private partnerships and relied on “non-governmental analysis” to identify threats. That framework greenlit a backdoor around the Constitution. By treating the SPLC’s partisan analysis as a substitute for sworn evidence, the government laundered ideological narratives into official federal threat assessments. This shadow intelligence partnership was not an accident.
The FBI’s Richmond memo, better known as the anti-Catholic memo, showed exactly what that pipeline looked like in practice. The FBI used the SPLC’s analysis to define so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholics” by their opposition to abortion, LGBT ideology, and adherence to traditional family values. Sen Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed that one Richmond analyst produced a slide presentation that equated Catholic beliefs in “[c]onservative family values/roles” with ideas “[c]omparable to Islamist ideology.”
Despite former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s claim that the anti-Catholic memo was the work of “a single field office” with limited distribution, the records tell a different story. Multiple field offices were involved, the memo was distributed to more than 1,000 agents and employees, and congressional investigators uncovered at least 13 more documents using similar SPLC-driven “anti-Catholic terminology.” Ideological narrative laundering became the FBI’s standard practice.
FBI officials themselves recognized the problem. In an internal FBI email exchange, one official asked, “Is anyone really asking for a product like this?” and complained that “[a]pparently we are at the behest of the SPLC.” Another FBI official admitted the FBI’s “overreliance on the SPLC hate designations is … problematic.”
The declassified Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) confirms that the Biden administration didn’t just tolerate outside ideological input from partisan organizations. It established a formal mechanism to solicit “non-governmental” analysis. Under Action 1.1.1c, the plan directs DHS to: “Develop and implement a mechanism for receiving relevant [domestic terrorism]-related analysis and information from non-governmental experts and share that information appropriately and consistently across the U.S. Government.”
That is the backdoor I warned about. The federal government built a system that let unvetted “experts” feed partisan analysis directly into “domestic terror” work products. The previous administration made it a structural feature of the system.
But the scandal goes beyond language and documents. The FBI gave the SPLC influence over how its agents understood the threat landscape. It allowed SPLC personnel to help train its agents on extremism and extremist organizations — groups the SPLC now stands accused of infiltrating and financially supporting.
Thus the bureau stopped treating the SPLC as an outside source and started treating it like a partner. Now acting Attorney General Todd Blanche says the government’s scrutiny of the SPLC began years ago. If true, this admission exposes a far deeper scandal where the bureau was aware of the rot and chose to preserve the partnership anyway. The FBI doesn’t get to rely on SPLC training and resources and then plead ignorance about the organization’s methods.
The April 2026 indictment reveals the extent of the SPLC’s shadow network. It allegedly used covert channels, including shell companies, to launder $3 million to the very extremists it claimed to expose. A certain level of tradecraft is necessary to cultivate and manage informants inside violent groups, which raises an obvious question: Who taught the SPLC to use those methods, and what did federal agencies know?
Nonprofits do not operate this way. This is how a de facto intelligence organization operates, and we can’t allow it to stand. Congress must immediately prohibit federal agencies from using unvetted, partisan “hate lists” as the basis for domestic investigations and work products. It must also require any intelligence work products that use non-government data or sources to carry a warning label that discloses the source’s funding and partisan history.
The government should immediately declassify and release every work product that relied on SPLC sourcing. Beyond the SPLC, we need to know if other ideological partisan organizations also had outsized influence over federal threat assessments and work products. The public has a right to know how deep this pipeline ran. We also have a right to know whether taxpayer dollars helped fund this operation and, if so, how much.
Finally, and most importantly, we must dismantle the mechanism — the “National Strategy” — that allowed this shadow intelligence apparatus to take deeper root inside the bureaucracy. Our institutions belong to the American people, not unelected partisan actors who weaponize the federal government against us.
Nicholas Giordano is a full-time, tenured professor of political science and the host of “The P.A.S. Report Podcast.”
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