annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
Far-left Southern Poverty Law Center reimbursed Klan members for cross-burnings: feds
The SPLC paid reluctant white nationalists and Ku Klux Klan members thousands of dollars in donor money to remain in the notorious hate groups — even making them whole for money spent on cross-burn…nypost.com
You can also read the updated indictment there. It doesn't contain any new charges but It provides more details and clearer language than the old one.
They had to provide the superseding indictment because the original indictment had problems, and the judge had to remind prosecutors that (citing
Berger v. United States, 1935):
The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a
controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is
as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore,
in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall
be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of
the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence
suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor—indeed, he should do
so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones.
Some additional reading, if you're interested:
Federal prosecutors at the Justice Department are stepping on their own toes trying to fix their indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center.
... there were considerable problems with the original indictment, which legal experts posited could make it difficult to win in court.
This week, the DOJ's director of public affairs Emily Covington shared a superseding indictment with the media that was supposed to have fixed the errors. Instead, Covington made a grave error herself by publishing a draft version of the document and, in turn, potentially violating grand jury secrecy rules, national security journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote on her EmptyWheel blog.
The superseding indictment also warps the rationale behind the charges, arguing that they do not stem from the general practice of paying informants but rather that the SPLC had violated the law by failing to notify its donors of the operational mechanics of its informant network. But, as former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance argued, the SPLC didn't need to.
"DOJ may find itself with egg on its face when it comes to donors' views of how SPLC used their money," Vance wrote Thursday in her own assessment of the new document. "They weren't obligated to publish a roadmap explaining exactly how they infiltrate dangerous organizations. Journalists do not disclose confidential sources. Civil rights groups tracking violent extremists aren't obligated to expose their work, which would compromise it.
"This isn't a case like the 'We Build The Wall' fraud Steve Bannon and others were charged in, after they promised not to take donor money for personal use and then did," Vance noted.
The SPLC was founded in 1971 in order to combat white supremacist groups after the Civil Rights Movement. Its activity was never a secret to the government—in fact, the SPLC frequently coordinated with local and federal law enforcement, sharing its findings in order to dismantle hateful institutions.
