The Southern Poverty Law Center’s interim CEO, Bryan Fair, has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on June 9, the committee announced Wednesday.
A committee spokeswoman told The Daily Signal on Thursday that the hearing will be open to press and to the public. The committee may have other witnesses present but is not announcing them at this time.
The committee announced Fair’s testimony on Wednesday, hours after holding a hearing on the SPLC and the federal indictment it faces over fraud charges. The Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government also held a hearing on the SPLC in December. An SPLC official did not testify at either hearing. The committee in April invited Fair to testify Wednesday, but he was busy, so he had to reschedule for June 9.
The committee’s chairman, Jim Jordan, summarized the indictment, which a grand jury handed down last month, in his opening statement at Wednesday’s hearing.
“They call them field sources—individuals the Southern Poverty Law Center paid to gin up hate, the very hate they told their supporters that they were fighting,” Jordan said. He noted that the indictment mentions field source 37, an organizer of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, who allegedly received $270,000 over eight years.
The grand jury indictment charged the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy in a scheme to defraud donors by paying the very “hate groups” the organization claims it exists to oppose. The SPLC has pleaded not guilty. While it has not denied the payments, it claims it had been paying informants to tip the center off to violence before it happens. The SPLC has claimed that information from its field sources contributed to the convictions of two extremists planning violent attacks.
Jordan’s opening statement noted the close ties the SPLC had with the Biden administration, particularly the Justice Department and the FBI.
“The Biden administration, they helped make the SPLC the standard,” he noted. “They consulted with the Southern Poverty Law Center; they had quarterly meetings with them. … They gave the SPLC first look at FBI data, and they used them to train their prosecutors.” He also mentioned the infamous FBI Richmond memo citing the SPLC on “radical-traditional Catholic hate groups.”
Jordan also noted that, according to Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Justice Department had been investigating the SPLC’s field sources under Biden, but declined to investigate.
“They knew the Southern Poverty Law Center was running this scam, but they dropped the case, because when you meet with them, consult with them, have them train your prosecutors, well guess what, you’re not going to prosecute them,” the chairman said. “They ran a scam, they became the standard, they didn’t get prosecuted, and they made a ton of money.”
Jordan also noted that the SPLC puts mainstream conservative and Christian organizations—such as the Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA, and Alliance Defending Freedom—on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
“But not Jane’s Revenge, nope. Even though Jane’s Revenge firebombed and vandalized churches, crisis pregnancy centers in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, they never made the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list,” the chairman noted.
Democrats on the committee, led by Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., noted that SPLC donors have not come forward to say they were defrauded. The Democrat witness, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights President and CEO Maya Wiley, noted that the SPLC gave the FBI a 45-page dossier before the “Unite the Right” rally, warning of potential violence.
Democrats framed the indictment as an attack on civil society, an attempt to silence critics of President Donald Trump.
Yet one of the witnesses, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, spoke eloquently about the fact that a since-convicted terrorist used the SPLC “hate map” to target the council for an attempted mass shooting in 2012. He pointed to a member of the audience, Leo Johnson, who had suffered injuries in preventing the attack, and the committee applauded Johnson’s bravery.
According to the committee, Fair will testify on Tuesday, June 9, at 10 a.m.
The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.
