WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) – The chairman of the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Tuesday asked the Southern Poverty Law Center’s boss to testify before the panel in May after the civil rights group was indicted last week.
• President Donald Trump’s administration obtained a criminal indictment last week charging SPLC with defrauding its own donors by using paid informants to infiltrate far-right organizations.
• SPLC is a civil rights group that tracks political extremists. It condemned last week’s charges as “false allegations.”
• “We respectfully request your testimony at a hearing of the Committee on the Judiciary on May 20, 2026,” U.S. Representative Jim Jordan from Trump’s Republican Party said in a letter to Bryan Fair, SPLC’s interim president and CEO.
• Many rights advocates have raised alarm over what they call the Trump administration’s crackdown on civil rights groups and voices of dissent.
• The 55-year-old law center had long shared information it collected with the FBI and other law enforcement groups before the Trump administration cut ties with the SPLC six months ago.
• The congressional hearing will examine the role that SPLC “has played in distorting federal civil rights policy in recent years,” Jordan said in his letter on Tuesday.
• Jordan claimed SPLC’s reports on hate in the U.S. included a “highly partisan understanding of ‘hate'” against conservatives.
• SPLC says its program of paid informants has “saved lives” and was not a secret to the federal government.
• The FBI also uses paid informants in its investigations.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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