Several Democratic members of Congress are demanding answers from the Department of Justice after a whistleblower alleged that prosecutors were ordered to rush the controversial indictment of a prominent left-leaning civil rights organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC has long drawn fire from some on the right who label it a hate group — a charge rooted in opposition to the organization’s work tracking discrimination and extremism.

MS NOW reports that it exclusively obtained a description of the whistleblower’s allegations, which state that prosecutors had concerns about the strength of the case against the SPLC. Former federal fraud prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, an MS NOW contributor and a former Mueller team member, called the legal theory behind the indictment “exceedingly far-fetched.”

“According to whistleblower information provided to this Committee, Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh ordered your office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama, to rush through the indictment of the SPLC, despite serious concerns about the strength of the case,” reads a letter from U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

MS NOW reports that current and former DOJ officials describe Singh as an “enforcer” for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has pushed U.S. attorneys to bring cases of interest to Trump.

Raskin and Scanlon’s letter alleges “systemic flaws” in the indictment.

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“As you are well aware,” the Democrats’ letter continues, “it is a violation of Department of Justice (DOJ) regulations to  commence a prosecution when an attorney for the government does not believe ‘that the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.’ It is also a  violation of federal law to intimidate or injure individuals or organizations for exercising their  constitutional rights, including their right to free speech.”

The letter was sent to Kevin Davidson, the acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted by a federal grand jury last month in Alabama’s Middle District on charges including fraud and money laundering. The indictment alleges the 54-year old organization, which worked to bankrupt the Ku Klux Klan through lawsuits, paid more than $3 million to informants working in extremist groups.

“The indictment alleged that those informants furthered the hateful aims of the various groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi groups,” MS NOW reports. The SPLC denies any wrongdoing, saying its informants fed intelligence to the FBI and DOJ for years.

Weissmann noted that the indictment does not specify what the SPLC told donors that was fraudulent.

“DOJ’s exercise in gaslighting-by-indictment also requires America to bury its head in the sand and pretend SPLC’s payments to infiltrate white nationalist groups were meant to support them, despite evidence to the contrary presented in its charging document,” Raskin wrote to Singh.

Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, charged that federal prosecutors are “bringing cases without probable cause or any reasonable expectation of winning at trial.”

“Instead, the clear purpose of your directive and the onslaught of bogus cases is to intimidate and stifle criticism of this Administration’s policies,” Raskin said.

READ MORE: Trump Attacks ‘Very Disloyal’ GOP Senator — Calls for Him to Lose Primary

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Professor of Law Richard Hasen, an elections law expert, is denouncing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito as a “coward” who is either lying to himself or the American public, after authoring what has been called the “earthquake” decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which sharply erodes the Voting Rights Act.

Alito’s “disastrous” majority opinion in Callais “essentially gutted what remains of the Voting Rights Act,” but he “claims to have done no such thing. The question is why,” Hasen posits.

Hasen charges that Justice Alito was too “afraid” to share his actual opinion, and so he found ways to “get away with overturning Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act through technical minutiae rather than through a direct hit.”

Section 2, passed in 1965, is the provision of the Voting Rights Act that protects minority voters from discriminatory voting laws and maps.

Hasen argues that Alito’s opinions in both Callais and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee “necessarily imply” that “Congress cannot do anything to protect minority voting rights short of banning intentional discrimination despite the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee, despite the 15th Amendment’s ban on race discrimination in voting, and despite the fact that both amendments explicitly give Congress the power to enforce the measures by ‘appropriate legislation.'”

READ MORE: Trump Attacks ‘Very Disloyal’ GOP Senator — Calls for Him to Lose Primary

He notes that Alito managed to render Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “essentially toothless,” while leaving the six-decade-old landmark law on the books.

“Since Brnovich,” he writes, “no plaintiffs have brought successful suits under Section 2 challenging a law alleged to suppress votes.”

Indeed, Alito’s opinions in both cases are “extreme overkill,” handing states “multiple pathways” to defeat a Section 2 claim.

Hasen explains that for Alito, “to discriminate against Louisiana Democrats is not to discriminate against Louisiana’s Black voters, despite the overwhelming overlap between the two groups.”

But for Hasen, the most “galling” issue is that Alito “goes out of his way to disclaim he is making radical change while putting multiple stakes through the heart of Section 2.”

He offers some possibilities of why Alito has acted in this way.

“Maybe Alito is worried that a ruling forthrightly saying what he is doing would sully the reputation of the court, which has already faced public criticism for killing off another key part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013’s Shelby County decision,” Hasen writes. “Perhaps he is worried that a frontal kill of Section 2 would energize Democrats, leading to greater losses for Republicans in the midterm elections and in future elections.”

Regardless, Hasen concludes, no one “is fooled by Justice Alito’s act of cowardice, unless it is Justice Alito himself. If that’s the case, he is more deluded than he seems to think the rest of us are.”

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In a double-barreled attack, President Donald Trump has targeted a two-term sitting Republican U.S. Senator, calling for him to be voted out during the GOP primary — which is tight and barely weeks away — while criticizing him for his vote on impeachment and his opposition to the president’s pick for Surgeon General.

Calling U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) “a very disloyal person” who won election thanks to his endorsement, the president blasted him for his Senate vote to convict him “on what has now proven to be a total Hoax and Scam.”

Accusing Cassidy of “intransigence and political games,” Trump charged that he has “stood in the way of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Nominee, Casey Means, for the important position of U.S. Surgeon General.”

Just sixteen days before the GOP primary, Trump did not hold back.

“Hopefully all of the Great Republican People of Louisiana, which I won, BIG, three times, will be voting Bill Cassidy OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary!”

READ MORE: Trump Stalls J6 Lawsuits From Officers and Lawmakers With Immunity Push: Report

According to The Hill, Senator Cassidy is currently polling behind two of his GOP primary challengers among likely Republican voters.

Cassidy got just 21 percent support, U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow received 27 percent, and state treasurer John Fleming received 28 percent, according to an Emerson poll. Although Trump endorsed Congresswoman Letlow in January, she has yet to pull into the lead.

In 2021, Cassidy was one of just seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump for inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Of the seven, just three are currently serving: Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski.

Minutes after his attack, Trump announced his nomination of Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole B. Saphier to become Surgeon General, after calling Means “a strong MAHA Warrior” who “understands the MAHA Movement better than anyone, with perhaps the possible exception of ME!”