Washington — The Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday asked a federal judge to dismiss the criminal charges filed against it by the Justice Department, saying the indictment represents a “top-down, retributive campaign” directed by President Trump to target his enemies.
The 47-page filing in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama documents a series of public statements by the president and other top administration officials targeting the center, including one in which Mr. Trump called it “one of the greatest political scams in American History.”
“This is the very definition of a vindictive prosecution,” lawyers for the SPLC wrote. “The Court should dismiss the indictment as a violation of due process.”
The Justice Department secured an 11-count indictment in April, charging the civil rights nonprofit with wire fraud and bank fraud. The indictment alleges that the group, which is best known for its work to oppose the Ku Klux Klan, lied to donors about paying confidential informants to infiltrate hate groups and deceived banks about the bank accounts used to make those payments.
The SPLC has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and vowed to fight them.
It is generally difficult to prevail in getting charges dismissed on the grounds of vindictive prosecution, but such requests have become increasingly common amid rising concerns among current and former Justice Department officials about cases being driven by political retribution.
Just last week, a federal judge dismissed smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran-born Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration last year. The judge found that the Justice Department’s prosecution was vindictive.
Numerous former federal prosecutors have publicly weighed in on the indictment against the SPLC, saying it appears to be weak and has a likely chance of being dismissed due to a variety of legal defects with how the case is charged.
In the group’s motion to dismiss the charges on Tuesday, its lawyers noted that investigators from the FBI and IRS probed the organization and interviewed several people sometime between 2019 and 2020, but never sought criminal charges.
“Whatever its genesis or focus, the earlier inquiry resulted in no charges being brought,” they wrote.
Then, after the group became a frequent target of the Trump administration’s verbal assaults, the case was re-opened, SPLC’s lawyers noted. In the weeks and months before they informed the group that they were seeking an indictment, prosecutors did not seek any new documents or interview any current employees, the filing said.
“From the start of the second Trump Administration, targeting groups like the SPLC became a priority,” the group’s lawyers wrote.
Progressive nonprofits have been frequent targets of the Trump administration.
Last year, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the FBI to investigate groups that may be suspected of funding acts of domestic terrorism. In her memo, she defined domestic terrorists as those who “use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.”
Her directive was spawned by an executive order from Mr. Trump in the fall, which ordered the government to designate antifa as a terrorist group.
Since then, a number of high-profile Trump administration officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, have publicly attacked the SPLC, the motion said.
“The quintessential forms of direct evidence of genuine animus are statements from prosecutors and Executive Branch officials expressing improper motivations for bringing charges,” its lawyers said in the filing.
