A newly disclosed video has revealed that the Biden administration partnered with the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to label conservative organizations as “domestic terrorism threats.”
The video shows SPLC President Margaret Huang addressing a donor meeting in 2021, in which she states, “I think there’s no question that we are unparalleled in our abilities to track and monitor the hate and extremist groups in the country, and I can tell you that we’ve had many agencies in the new Biden administration reaching out to solicit our expertise and our knowledge and information to help shape the policies that the new administration is adopting to counter the domestic terrorism threat.”
The revelation comes in the wake of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) repeatedly refusing to either confirm or deny that it has worked with the SPLC in its effort to label Christians and conservatives as “domestic terrorist threats.” During multiple appearances before Congress last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray repeatedly evaded directly answering whether his agency worked with the SPLC, and written statements by the FBI have similarly avoidedspecifics in response to the question.
The SPLC, which purports to track “hate groups,” lists racist extremist groups such as the KKK and neo-Nazis alongside Christian and conservative groups for advocating for a biblical view of marriage and sexuality on its “hate map,” including Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel, D. James Kennedy Ministries, the Ruth Institute, Moms for Liberty, and Parents Defending Education, among others.
The SPLC has been the subject of heightened scrutiny since the August 2012 terrorist attack on Family Research Council, in which a gunman, who shot and wounded building manager Leo Johnson before being subdued, later cited the SPLC’s inclusion of FRC on their “hate map” as part of his motivation for attempting to kill as many people as possible inside FRC’s headquarters.
On January 12, Tyler O’Neil, managing editor at The Daily Signal and author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” joined “Washington Watch” to discuss the deep connections that the SPLC has with the Biden administration.
“[T]he SPLC has done a lot of work with the Biden administration,” he explained. “The SPLC has been at the White House 11 times with their leaders and staff, many meetings with President Biden … himself, even though they classify conservative and Christian organizations … as hate groups on par with the KKK. So apparently, that doesn’t faze Biden at all. In fact … he nominated Nancy Abudu, an SPLC attorney, to a top federal judgeship. So the ties make this very plausible that the Biden administration reached out to the SPLC on domestic terrorism. … It should terrify Americans that the Biden administration would consider this organization to have any credibility on domestic terrorism whatsoever.”
O’Neil went on to note that even as the Biden administration’s policies on the southern border are likely aggravating the threat of domestic terrorism, the SPLC not only continues to be a source for the administration but is also targeting organizations that are working to thwart domestic terrorism.
“[M]any of the organizations that are rightly raising the alarm about … the fact that people on the terrorist watch list have been able to cross our southern border into the United States … are actually on the SPLC hate map,” he pointed out. “Organizations like the Center for Immigration Studies and the Federation for American Immigration Reform are on the map that has inspired terrorism, and the SPLC is going to charitable organizations trying to get them to blacklist these organizations and trying to silence critics of the Biden administration’s open borders policy.”
O’Neil further highlighted how the SPLC’s own employees have been linked to domestic terrorism.
“[An] SPLC attorney … was actually arrested on charges of domestic terrorism last March because he was involved in a riot where [agitators were] using Molotov cocktails,” he observed. “The SPLC has for years carried water for the violent Antifa radical group that inspired all of those riots in 2020, the most destructive riots in U.S. history when it comes to specific damage. So this organization is turning a blind eye to violence. It also has its attorneys charged with domestic terrorism. And yet the Biden administration is more than happy to work with them on these issues.”
Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.
