As Democrats scramble to protect the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) after it was indicted for fraud, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., attempted to have the truth about an infamous anti-Trump hoax the SPLC peddled removed from the congressional record.
At a Wednesday hearing of the House Judiciary Committee titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate,” ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., launched into the heavily debunked claim that President Donald Trump praised white supremacists at a 2017 Charlottesville rally as “very fine people.” Notably, the hearing took place in light of a grand jury indictment of the SPLC that detailed its reported funding of an individual involved in planning the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. The SPLC was one of many left-wing entities that spread the same hoax Raskin parroted.
Later in the hearing a Republican congressman disproved Raskin’s false claim by citing Trump’s actual words.
“I do need to call out the ranking member for deliberately perpetuating the Democrats’ dishonest claim that Donald Trump praised the Nazis at Charlottesville when he said there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’” Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said, challenging Raskin. “What the ranking member knows, but chose to leave out, is that Trump then said, ‘I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.’ The ranking member knows this, and the fact that he perpetuated that today speaks for itself.”
This rebuttal prompted Johnson to step in and try to have the truth officially removed from the minutes of the hearing. Johnson cut off McClintock’s questioning time to demand that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. — who was filling in for Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as chairman — have “the gentleman’s words be taken down.”
McClintock “mentioned twice that the ranking member misled, deceived, and lied to this committee,” Johnson continued, making the argument that impugning the words of a committee member violates the rules of decorum. Issa ruled that it did “not violate the rules of decorum.”
When questioning time returned to McClintock, he said, “The gentleman can’t handle the truth,” before going on to ask about the nearly $300,000 the SPLC allegedly paid to the “chief organizer” of the Charlottesville rally. The federal grand jury indictment against the SPLC alleges that for nearly a decade, the SPLC “secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals” involved with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations.
Witnesses at the hearing testified that while on the one hand, the SPLC was funding the exact kind of “hate” it claimed to fight against, on the other, it was busy labeling normal conservative groups like Moms for Liberty, the Family Research Council, Turning Point USA, and the Alliance Defending Freedom as “hate groups.” Meanwhile, it did not label left-wing groups like Jane’s Revenge, which firebombed multiple pro-life pregnancy centers, “hate groups.”
The FBI’s Richmond Field Office under the Biden administration cited the SPLC as a source justifying going after Catholics who celebrate the Latin Mass. As the SPLC broadened its search for “hate groups” to include any right-of-center organization, it was also able to paint the picture to its donors that “hate” was running rampant and increasing in America.
Jordan said the SPLC’s game plan became “we’re going to create the crisis, we’re going to manufacture the crisis, and by so doing they became the standard, the source for determining who’s a hate group and who isn’t.”
The organization had direct contact with the Biden administration’s Department of Justice and effectively gave them marching orders as to which of the Democrats’ political enemies to attack, Jordan said. The plan was extremely lucrative, as well, with Jordan noting that after the “Unite the Right” rally, the SPLC “nearly tripled its income” from $51 million per year to $133 million.
“Turned out, for them, creating hate was more profitable than fighting it,” Jordan said.
