Trump Claims SPLC Lawsuit Is a Sign He Actually Won the 2020 Election

Donald Trump appears to believe that his administration’s targeting of an anti-extremism civil rights organization can be leveraged to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.“The Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the greatest political scams in American History, has been charged with FRAUD,” Trump wrote on Truth Social very early Friday. “This is another Democrat Hoax, along with Act Blue, and many others,” he continued, referring to the Democratic campaign fundraising platform. “If it is true, the 2020 Presidential Election should be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect!”It is unclear how this lawsuit could have any retroactive impact on an election that Trump unequivocally lost.Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gleefully announced the indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday, claiming that the famed anti-racism group was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”The Montgomery-based SPLC was founded in 1971 in order to combat white supremacist groups after the Civil Rights Movement. Its activity was never a secret to the government—in fact, the SPLC frequently coordinated with local and federal law enforcement, sharing its findings in order to dismantle hateful institutions. Yet in the decades since its founding, the nonprofit’s purview has been nationally perceived (at least on the right) as less and less acceptable. Conservative politicians and personalities have railed against the advocacy group, claiming that its work—which includes tracking extremist groups, promoting tolerance, and kneecapping bigotry through litigation—is inherently partisan and overly leftist.Tuesday’s indictment includes 11 counts against the anti-extremism group related to its undercover activities. They include six counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to conceal money laundering, and charges related to allegedly falsified bank statements. (Observers have already noted that the charges appear, on their face, difficult to prove in court.)In a statement released earlier this week, SPLC CEO Bryan Fair noted that while the SPLC had used informants to monitor the threat of violence inside extremist organizations, the information the public gleaned as a result was invaluable.“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”