A former top official at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a storied civil rights organization at the center of a Justice Department prosecution, was indicted Wednesday in an escalation of the case against the nonprofit, officials said.
Federal prosecutors in Alabama accused Heidi Beirich, the nonprofit’s ex-chief financial officer, of overseeing payments to informants working with a variety of hate groups, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters.
A lawyer for Beirich denounced the allegations as an attempt by the Justice Department to “silence political opponents” and vowed she would fight the charges.
“Violent extremists have not stopped or intimidated Dr. Beirich from her vital work during her time at the SPLC or in the six and a half years after she left the SPLC,” defense lawyer Michael Proctor said in a statement. “Dr. Beirich won’t be silenced or intimidated by the government’s false and politicized allegations now. She welcomes the opportunity to present the truth in court.”
In April, Blanche unveiled an 11-count indictment against the SPLC charging it with bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, saying it misled donors by using their money to secretly fund informants in extremist groups.
The organization’s leadership denounced the case as an effort to weaponize the Justice Department against groups unfriendly to President Donald Trump. The SPLC’s donors intended their money to be used to combat extremist groups, they said, and that’s exactly what the informant program did.
The indictment alleged the SPLC had defrauded its donors by paying more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to at least eight individuals working inside groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement. In some cases, prosecutors said, the source of the money was disguised through accounts associated with fictitious businesses.
Beirich, in her role as chief financial officer, oversaw some of those payments, Blanche said.
“She was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate or described,” the attorney general said Wednesday.
Attorneys for the organization have said the SPLC began paying informants to help infiltrate those organizations as a means to protect its staff and gather intelligence on hate groups that posed a threat. Often the information they learned was shared with federal and local law enforcement to advance their investigations, they said.
A spokesperson for the SPLC said earlier this year that the informant program has been discontinued.
The nonprofit has rejected the claim that payments to informants amounted to fraud, saying that donors were well aware of the organization’s work and that the payments to informants furthered that mission.
The SPLC was founded in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1971 with the goal of ensuring that civil rights laws passed by Congress and enshrined by the courts would become a reality on the ground. It is known for its efforts to monitor and take legal action against white supremacist groups.
In recent years, the SPLC has become a frequent target of Republican-led congressional inquiries, with conservative critics accusing it of coordinating with the Biden administration to unfairly malign Christians and conservatives exercising their First Amendment rights.
That criticism reached its peak following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year. The SPLC had described the organization he led, Turning Point USA, as emblematic of the “hard right” in a 2024 report on hate and extremist groups. FBI Director Kash Patel announced in October that the bureau was severing ties with the organization, which had long worked with federal agents to identify and provide tips on domestic extremist groups.
Under Trump, the Justice Department has launched criminal investigations of several people and organizations viewed as politically opposed to the president. That includes groups such as ActBlue, Democrats’ main fundraising platform, as well as outspoken critics from Trump’s first administration and law firms that have represented Trump’s political adversaries.
Proctor, Beirich’s attorney, described her Wednesday as a “renowned authority on white supremacist and far-right extremist movements in the United States and abroad” who has testified before Congress and served as an expert witness in prominent court cases.
“Heidi Beirich has dedicated her life to fighting hate groups and extremist movements like the KKK, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists,” Proctor said in a statement, adding, “Her decades-long record of success dismantling hate groups — and the resulting threats to her life — speak volumes.”
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