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.
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