In a 390-page Tuesday filing, lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Center have asked a federal judge to throw out felony charges of wire fraud, making false statements to a bank, and money laundering. You can read the indictment here, and the defense memorandum arguing for dismissal here (without the hundreds of pages of exhibits that accompanied the motion).
Now represented by nine lawyers at three law firms, including Hunter Biden lawyer and D.C. fixer Abbe Lowell, the SPLC argues that it’s the victim of vindictive prosecution. They charge that “this Administration’s animus over the past year culminated in the criminal charges against the SPLC — an indictment premised on conclusory accusations but devoid of provable facts or a proper statement of the law.”
In fact, as The Federalist has reported, experts in money laundering investigations have described the allegations as straightforward descriptions of wire fraud and an organization making false statements to banks, concluding that the indictment alleges obvious crimes if the fact claims in the document can be proved in court.
Among other allegations, federal prosecutors allege that the SPLC opened bank accounts in the names of companies that have never existed or conducted legitimate business. The indictment also alleged that SPLC officials responded to a bank investigation by acknowledging to the bank, in writing and over the signature of SPLC leaders, that the accounts for fake businesses had been opened by the SPLC. The SPLC has due process rights and is entitled to a presumption of innocence, but if the indictment correctly describes that letter, a legal expert has previously described the letter to The Federalist as “an admission of fraud against the bank.”
The memorandum filed on Tuesday by the SPLC doesn’t mention any of that, ignoring the substance of the charges to focus on Donald Trump’s personal tendency toward meanness. Sample argument, from pg. 9 of the PDF file linked above (which is pg. 4 of the memorandum): “After the indictment, the Administration’s assault on the SPLC’s free speech rights continued. President Trump, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Deputy Associate Attorney General Aakash Singh, and FBI Director Kash Patel spoke at press conferences and televised interviews.”
That’s the heart of the argument: The SPLC can’t be prosecuted because federal officials held press conferences, which supposedly proves unlawful and vindictive targeting.
The memorandum goes on to frame the indictment as an attempt to intimidate a political enemy, again evading discussion of the actual charges: “The attempts by President Trump to muzzle and intimidate the SPLC did not deter it from carrying out its mission. The SPLC continued to publicly criticize and challenge many of the Administration’s policies.” You’ll find that quote on pg. 11 of the memorandum, which is pg. 16 of the linked PDF file.
What you will not find in the defense memorandum arguing for dismissal is a discussion of the allegations that the SPLC opened bank accounts in the names of businesses that didn’t exist, giving false statements to banks in order to open the accounts and subsequently transferring money in the names of those non-existent businesses.
Following the framing from defense lawyers, media coverage omits discussion of the actual charges, focusing on questions that don’t figure into the indictment. “The motion was filed against the backdrop of other politically charged prosecutions that have raised concerns that the Justice Department is operating as a weapon to target Trump’s opponents,” PBS News reported on Tuesday.
“Lawyers for the SPLC have already argued that law enforcement agencies have long known that the nonprofit paid informants to report on the movements of hate groups,” PBS added. But the SPLC is not charged with crimes simply for paying informants.
These are the consistent themes of the media coverage, as the news stories scrupulously avoid mentioning the actual charges. Without mentioning bank accounts opened in the name of fake businesses, The Hill reports that the Trump administration “brought charges against the group in April, accusing the organization of defrauding its donors by using a now-defunct informant program to funnel money to the extremist groups they were spying on.” Again, the SPLC is not charged with a crime simply for paying informants.
In a similar strategy two years ago, Lowell argued that Hunter Biden was being vindictively prosecuted by a DOJ that had given in to political pressure. After that strategy failed, Biden was convicted on multiple federal tax charges, but was pardoned by his father.
