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Comment by tnelsond4 | Hacker News Reader

Organizations love to run controlled opposition. Just came out that the Southern poverty law center has been funding the KKK of all things.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdal/pr/federal-grand-jury-char...

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Are you not aware that that the credibility of the US DOJ under the present administration has been completely destroyed and you should not trust anything they say simply because they said it in a press release (perhaps especially because they said it in a press release)? Federal judges have repeatedly declined to give the DOJ the benefit of the doubt (called "presumption of regularity") and all but called them liars. [1]

In this case, experts are unanimous that this is a hit job by Director Patel (see his poor record here [2]) who had a political vendetta against this civil rights organization. SPLC's actions were all related to investigations to EXPOSE the KKK using undercover informants. They were paying investigators, not the organization. They were absolutely in no way "funding the KKK."

“SPLC is a leading authority on organized hate groups and undertakes the complex and often dangerous work of investigating and exposing these networks. Its outstanding record of tracking and addressing hate belies the misguided premise of the indictment — that SPLC was somehow supporting the very hate groups it has long helped to discredit and dismantle.

“The DOJ’s actions are wrong and part of a broader effort to intimidate organizations working to advance civil rights, strengthen our democracy, and hold bad actors accountable.[3]

[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/120547/presumption-regularity-t...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-...

[3] https://www.lawyerscommittee.org/statement-from-the-lawyers-...

I'm definitely not aware that the credibility of the US DOJ has been destroyed.

And I question why a 501c3 charity would need "field informants" and to launder money through shell corporations. Especially to leaders of these organizations who were (1) coordinating some of these rallies and (2) due to the materially dishonest treatment of the "fine people hoax" for years.

Is the SPLC an intelligence organization? Am I missing something?

What fine people hoax? Trump has been and is right now openly racist.

It has just been alleged.

There is very compelling evidence. Bank transfers.

Paying someone to report on what the kkk is doing is not, in fact, the same thing as funding the kkk.

What a weird lie to parrot.

source?

If that's your level of compelling evidence, Trump, his family and all of his entourage should be arrested right now.

Given some of the other claims that have come out of the "Justice" Department under this administration, I'd be curious whether there are any more reputable sources on the matter. They've already been making a habit of trying to target people Trump dislikes with flimsy prosecutions (e.g. Don Lemon for covering a protest at a church).

Even beyond that, there's pretty clear evidence of the level of professional conduct of the department being pretty low, like their lawyers literally informing a judge that they lied about the basis of their arguments[0], cases getting dismissed because they were filed by someone who wasn't even a valid US Attorney[1] but who continued to claim to be one for another couple of months until a court order threatening her with contempt charges (by a Trump-appointed judge, for what it's worth)[2], and in one instance a lawyer literally requesting that a judge hold them in contempt because their job "sucks"[3].

[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-court-arrests-ice-j... [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/24/halligan-dismissed-... [2]: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-orders-lindsey-halligan... [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/attorney...

A sucker is born every minute, and the Trump admin will make sure to con them all.

It's sort of tragic the onion takeover came on the heels of him being right about SPLC. There's something morally questionable about the largest civil fine in history being against a guy who accused a shooting of being a false flag and then apologized a few weeks later when better information came to light. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been sued, but rather it feels like the wrong amount for how apologetic he was even long before the lawsuit, especially given his show has a strong comedy aspect to it.

I don't see anywhere he was apologetic enough to fix any of the damages that he caused, and plenty of places where he was documented as doubling down on lies he knew were lies at the time.

The man was making money off of lying about dead children. Where's the comedy in that?

> against a guy who accused a shooting of being a false flag and then apologized a few weeks later when better information came

This is a blatant lie.

Alex Jones makes dozens of patently false claims per episode. Yet every once in a while, he will accidentally say something that can be associated with reality. People will latch onto those once-in-ten-thousand statements and say, "look! Alex Jones was actually right about x all along," while completely ignoring the veritable sea of misinformation he spouted along the way.

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