News Source
EXCERPT:
We have previously covered the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in great detail:
The latest development is that SPLC has filed a Motion to Dismiss the Indictment for Vindictive Prosecution, focused very heavily on public statements from Trump and others in his administration both before and after the indictment.
From the Motion:
President Trump’s triumphant statement on April 24, 2026, three days after an indictment was unsealed against the Southern Poverty Law Center (“the SPLC”), was the latest manifestation of a top-down, retributive campaign in which he directed his Justice Department to go after those individuals and groups he deemed his political enemies, including the SPLC.
To carry out the President’s directive, others in the Administration targeted the SPLC, which now faces criminal charges for exercising its First Amendment right to identify, report on, and criticize extremist hate groups. The Administration has falsely accused the SPLC of being “anti-Christian,” of aiding the Biden Administration’s “weaponization” of the Department of Justice, of participating in political violence, and, most recently, of helping to “rig” the 2020 election against President Donald Trump. These examples of 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….
Then, after praising the indictment his Justice Department handed him, President Trump went further. He publicly proclaimed the improper political motive behind the case, branding the SPLC a “Democrat Hoax, along with Act Blue and many others” and claimed that when the allegations are proven “the 2020 Presidential Election should be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect!” 2 President Trump doubled down on these farcical claims on a nationally televised 60 Minutes interview a few days later. He falsely proclaimed that the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia “was all funded by the Southern [Poverty] Law [Center].”3 President Trump asserted that the SPLC had funded this “total fake” event “to make me look bad.”4 The SPLC’s efforts, according to the President, were “a part of the rigging of the [2020] election.”5