Extremism expert charged in case on Southern Poverty Law Center informants

A former official at the Southern Poverty Law Center faces federal charges in connection with a case the Justice Department brought over the way the organization made payments to informants who provided details about extremist organizations.

Heidi Beirich has been charged in federal court in Montgomery, Alabama, her attorney said. Attorney General Todd Blanche said at an unrelated news conference that the case involved allegations that Beirich “was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate as described.” CNN first reported on the charges against Beirich.

“A free and fair society does not use the justice system to silence its political opponents,” Beirich attorney Michael J. Proctor said in a statement. “Heidi Beirich has dedicated her life to fighting hate groups and extremist movements like the KKK, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists. She has combatted these hateful, ugly, and un-American extremists and their repeated uses of violence and intimidation in order to promote a fairer, safer, and more just America. Her decades-long record of success dismantling hate groups—and the resulting threats to her life—speak volumes. For this, she has been indicted.”

Beirich is the former head of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The indictment alleges that she “was in a romantic relationship” with an informant who infiltrated the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization, and was paid more than $1.2 million over several years.

The charges were a part of the Justice Department’s effort to prosecute the nonprofit group over the alleged payments, which prosecutors say were made through shell companies, without donors’ knowledge.

But the Southern Poverty Law Center said that federal authorities were aware of the organization’s use of informants and mischaracterized the program and that the Trump administration is targeting the group because of its politics. It said the government has used information gathered by its informants in the past.

The SPLC, a nonprofit civil rights organization, was founded in 1971 and is based in Montgomery. It initially focused on the enforcement of civil rights laws in the South but has expanded over time. The group has been a frequent target of attacks by conservative critics who claim it is politically biased.

U.S. District Judge Emily Marks declined to dismiss the case against the SPLC, ruling last week that it had failed to provide objective evidence to show that the Justice Department was targeting it for exercising its First Amendment rights.

Abbe Lowell, an attorney representing the SPLC, said that the Beirich case is “as legally and factually flawed as their previous attacks” and that it reflected “a desperate government confronting a weak case, scrambling to make something — anything — stick as we approach trial.”

The SPLC, Lowell said in a statement, “did not lie to donors, did not mislead the banks it did business with, and its informant program prevented violence and saved lives.”