Even 'Bamans think this is bullshit.
Attorneys and law professors Wednesday expressed skepticism about the U.S. Department of Justice’s criminal case against the Southern Poverty Law Center, with few expecting the charges to lead to sanctions against the civil rights nonprofit.
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that SPLC’s use of paid informants within white supremacist groups — a tactic SPLC used to disrupt operations and gather information passed on to law enforcement — amounted to functional support of those groups and fraud on SPLC donors.
Several experts said the case amounts to political grandstanding by the Trump administration against an organization that has frequently criticized the president.
“The conduct at the core of the indictment, paying confidential sources inside violent extremist groups to gather intelligence, is something federal law enforcement does as a matter of course,” said Cassandra Burke Robertson, director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University law school. “Charging a civil rights organization criminally for doing the same thing, in this political context, strikes me as an abuse of the criminal law.”
She also said that the action could “backfire” on the administration because “I actually think that SPLC donors are likely to be very supportive of its work, including its past use of confidential informants, and that publicity of the matter may actually increase public support for the SPLC.”
SPLC has hired Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, based out of Atlanta, to represent the organization in the case.
Several Democrats, including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, issued statements in support of SPLC.
“The Trump administration has brought this paper-thin indictment for one reason: the Southern Poverty Law Center has a long history of exposing violent white supremacist extremists who are allies of this White House,” Durbin said in a statement. “I am confident that this vindictive prosecution will fail, just like the Administration’s other efforts to target the President’s political enemies.”