FBI Severs Ties with Southern Poverty Law Center

Oct. 6—FBI Director Kash Patel announced the news on Oct. 3 in a post on X: “The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine. Their so-called ‘hate map’ has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence. That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership…. Under this FBI, all ties with the SPLC have officially been terminated.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has maintained a “hate map” of groups they deem as extremists, which has been merely a finely-veiled excuse to attack political opponents. As with the announcement just days earlier that the FBI was cutting ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the recent discovery that the SPLC had placed Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA on its list of “hate groups” landed it in the crosshairs of MAGA networks. SPLC had put Turning Point USA on its list back in May, reported Fox News.

Andrew Kolvet, the spokesman for Turning Point USA, wrote in an X post on Oct. 2: “What’s happening right now to the ADL and SPLC is critically important and deadly serious. They are both part of an ecosystem leveraged by radical left vigilantes to dehumanize conservatives and stoke political violence. They provide the sheen of legitimacy for the left’s violent foot soldiers.” Kolvet highlighted that on Sept. 9, the day before Kirk’s murder, the SPLC published a newsletter attacking Kirk. “Did these contribute to the assassin’s motive?” Kolvet asked. He concluded: “The influence of the ADL and SPLC must be completely purged from any serious company, org, and agency.”

Kolvet also reposted a May post from Charlie Kirk, when SPLC had put his organization on its hate list, in which Kirk called SPLC a “laughingstock” that’s “been fleecing scared grandmas for decades.” Kirk then warned of SPLC’s “game plan”: “Scare financial institutions into debanking us, pressure schools to cancel us, and demonize us so some unhinged lunatic feels justified targeting us. Remember the Family Research Council? An SPLC-inspired gunman went after them. They’d love nothing more than to see TPUSA in the crosshairs.”

According to Fox News, Patel’s announcement came merely hours after Kolvet’s posts.