DOJ says it has superseding indictment against Southern Poverty Law Center

The Justice Department said Tuesday it obtained a superseding indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center that contained caller allegations astir however its donations were purportedly utilized to wage informants wrong hatred groups.

The superseding indictment, which the DOJ said was returned by a expansive assemblage successful the Middle District of Alabama, alleges that $4.1 cardinal worthy of tax-exempt funds were utilized to wage informants wrong extremist organizations, who past allegedly engaged successful activities including recruiting caller members and purchasing materials for transverse burnings and Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods. The charges bash not stem from the wide signifier of paying informants but from the Justice Department's allegations that the SPLC made these payments without disclosing the signifier to donors and by defrauding banks.

The superseding indictment does not incorporate immoderate caller charges oregon sanction caller defendants from the archetypal version, which was returned successful April.

The radical inactive faces 11 counts of ligament fraud, slope fraud and conspiracy to perpetrate wealth laundering, with prosecutors alleging it defrauded its donors and duped its banks by creating ammunition accounts to funnel wealth to insiders who belonged to the aforesaid hatred groups it pledged to dismantle.

The Southern Poverty Law Center pleaded not blameworthy to the charges filed successful April, and precocious asked the tribunal to disregard the case, saying it is simply a unfortunate of an unlawful vindictive prosecution.

"This evident superseding indictment attempts to enactment up the flaws successful the archetypal charges, but it changes nothing," the SPLC's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said successful a connection provided to CBS News.

"The SPLC did not prevarication to its donors, it did not mislead banks it did concern with, and its informant programme prevented unit and saved lives."

A nationalist transcript of the superseding indictment was not yet disposable connected the docket arsenic of Tuesday night, and the mentation provided by the Justice Department was not a last signed copy. 

Lowell, successful his statement, said the Justice Department appeared to person shared a transcript of the superseding indictment with the media earlier it was unsealed by the national territory court.

Such a determination represents "another illustration of the government's troubling and antithetic handling of this case," helium said, adding that SPLC's ineligible squad would beryllium addressing specified irregularities with the court.

The caller mentation of the indictment appeared to cleanable up what some erstwhile prosecutors said was problematic language successful the older version.

In the anterior version, the indictment alleged that an SPLC worker who opened the slope accounts successful question made "false oregon misleading statements."

But the Supreme Court past year, successful Thompson v. USA, ruled that the slope fraud statute astatine contented lone criminalizes mendacious statements — and not statements that are misleading but not false. Former prosecutors told CBS News that this mistake meant the indictment was wrongfully suggesting that misleading statements could beryllium criminal, and they predicted that the DOJ would request to instrumentality to the expansive assemblage to hole the mistake.

The caller mentation of the indictment nary longer includes the words "or misleading" successful notation to the statements made to banks.

The superseding indictment besides contains accusation astir SPLC's gross from its nationalist taxation filings, which had not been included successful the archetypal indictment.