FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the agency has severed all ties to the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center.
"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," Patel wrote in an X post.
"That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership. In April, during our Anti-Christian Bias Panel, I made it clear that the FBI will never rely on politicized or agenda-driven intelligence from outside groups — and certainly not from the SPLC. Under this FBI, all ties with the SPLC have officially been terminated," he expanded.
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.
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 3, 2025
In… pic.twitter.com/ZZ9yIkmzWj
He linked a Daily Signal news story that expanded on Patel's statement, saying, "The FBI confirmed that it has no intelligence products from the SPLC and does not engage in contact or information sharing with the SPLC."
On Thursday, Elon Musk posted about SPLC, saying it was "guilty of incitement to murder Charlie Kirk." In a post one day before Kirk was shot and killed, he was mentioned in the Montgomery-based organization's "Hatewatch" newsletter.
The organization has been under close scrutiny for years, with a congressional investigation, and multiple reports from America's First Legal, which has been investigating ties between the Biden administration and SPLC.
America First Legal obtained the documents via a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them first to The Daily Signal.
"All Americans should be shocked, appalled, and terrified that the Biden Justice Department was taking advice from a hate-filled, morally bankrupt organization like the Southern Poverty Law Center," Ian Prior, senior counselor at America First Legal, told The Daily Signal in a statement Monday. "The SPLC's agenda is anti-American to its core, and we must ensure that the SPLC never regains the power that it was so wrongly granted by the woke bureaucrats who ran this country until this past January."
"The SPLC has weaponized its designation of 'hate group' to target conservative persons, organizations, and non-profits who hold opposing viewpoints or policy positions. In 2019, a federal judge concluded that the SPLC's 'hate group' label does not 'depend upon objective data or evidence' and described the designation as 'an entirely subjective inquiry.' Despite this subjective slant, SPLC's labels have been used in the private sector as a basis for decisions to exclude partnerships with certain groups," U.S. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a press release as his committee began investigating the organization in 2023.
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