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Ok there is the legal question here, and it kind of looks like they are cooked because lying to banks seems like a very easy thing to prove. But probably more important is the court of public opinion, and what future donors will think. And reading the indictment it really seems very bad, the SPLC was going far beyond just paying informants for information. They were directly funding people who they promised to fight against. They were directly funding behaviors and events they promised to fight against. They were directly funding leadership of organizations they promised to fight against. To the tune of millions of dollars.
Some examples from the indictment:
The SPLC billed this as a hate rally, they told their donors they were working against it, and they solicited donations from them on that basis. At the same time they were paying organizers, they were telling people they paid to attend, and they were coordinating transportation to the rally. They told their donors they were working to stop a hate group doing "hate speech" while they directly funded and coordinated with leaders of that group to do that very same thing they promised to stop, with money that they said would be used to stop it!
This is what the SPLC tells its donors about the National Alliance. If the SPLC wanted to dismantle National Alliance why would they give their fundraiser a million dollars? How exactly could donating to a group be considered dismantling that group?
Is it honest and ethical to tell your donors you are working to stop this specific person and this specific organization while secretly paying that person, the former leader of that organization, $140,000? While giving their fundraiser (and presumably by extension that group) over $1,000,000? In what sense can the SPLC be said to be working against a man when they are directly funding him and indirectly funding his organization? In what sense is that not just flat out lying?
These are the people who set policy, who make decisions, who control the entire organization. In a very direct sense they ARE the organization, more so than anyone else, and the SPLC is giving them, the KKK, the SPLC's biggest bogeyman, hundreds of thousands of dollars and indirectly funding their lawsuits.
The indictment is pretty short so I encourage you to read it if you think I am taking these out of context. This information was not in the OP so maybe you were not aware of it, but does seeing it now does that change your mind at all? If it was just paying informants for information then I agree that the funding allegations would be quite a stretch. But that is not really even close to what was happening here. They were directly coordinating and promoting and facilitating this stuff. It looks much closer to "self licking ice cream cone" than "informants for info".
This seems to assume that the Charlottesville rally would not have occured had they not been in touch with a single member of the larger group chat behind the rally. Informants have to be higher ups in order to provide solid information, but it's not like they are gods who make all the decisions by themselves for the groups. Helping the informant avoid exposure also seems like a basic concept that doesn't require assuming Charlottesville wouldn't have happened without them.
Because if you want an informant on the inside to leak you information and stay under cover, financial appeal can help you where moral appeal might not. Just paying people to snitch is not some new concept. It's not something the SPLC has invented, it's been around since the beginning of snitches and is used by law enforcement constantly.
Consider in just the five years from 2012 to to this hearing in 2017 the ATF and DEA alone paid informants almost 260 million.
Surely there's a difference between the government doing something, and theoretically being democratically accountable for it, versus an NGO of questionable action and well beyond any form of normal accountability?
Though I'm not sure exactly where I fall on the question being "paying informants creates questionable incentives" versus "NGOs should be more accountable for self-interested and possibly fraudulent behaviors."
I struggle to come up with a more sympathetic NGO where I would find this acceptable. Like... if Worldvision was paying people to have more kids and put them in orphanages, I think we could agree that's perverse and insane.
As I said in another comment whether or not it's actually effective is a different question. It's not fraudulent to do a dumb idea that you genuinely think could work. If Tom accepts money on Kickstarter to make a new indie movie sequel, tries out a new editing technique for it and it turns out the sequel sucks because of that, Tom didn't commit fraud. Backers can be upset that the movie sucked but unless it was caused by purposefully wasting the money for something else then there's nothing illegal there.
The SPLC may or may not have been ineffective when using this strategy, but little proof has been actually presented as specific fraud. "I think their strategy is dumb or counterproductive" is not it.
The fraud is in creating fake bank accounts and shell entities. That it's stupid and absolutely inappropriate behavior for an NGO are separate complaints.
I think we're too far apart in our respective biases on the topic and what kind of actions should be allowable for NGOs to commit.
It seems like the actual law is rather specific given that using other company names for billing is a not that uncommon practice (see tons of sex toy/porn/etc companies for instance). IDK whether or not the SPLC behavior qualifies for that specific violation or not, but it's clearly not a given.
These sorts of rules are highly technical, and given the poor track record of targeted lawsuits so far against other enemies of the admin, I think it's fair to expect not much difference here.
Ehh, fair example.
I still see virtually no difference between this case and the Trump "34 felonies" hush money. He paid someone to not talk, recorded it under the wrong header, and everyone raised a big stink. The SPLC pays people to talk, set up shell accounts for it, and... somehow that's fine? I don't get it.
Very little I've said has been about the actual success of the case, which I expect to fail even if the leadership team of the SPLC said, on video and broadcasted to the world, "Real hate groups basically don't exist any more except the ones we pay to keep cushy activist jobs." Success of the case has little to do with the law or the behavior of the SPLC, and everything to do with Trump.
Whether or not it's fraud by legal standards if you squint and stand on one foot and jump through the loopholes, I think it's bad behavior for an NGO to engage in.
You seeing no difference is not the same as the actual legal specifics seeing no difference. Law is complex, especially weird niche financial stuff like this.
But your thoughts don't matter, the actual specifics of the law is what matters! If they are guilty of violating the law, and the evidence is collected and presented through proper procedures then they should be found guilty. But if they aren't, they shouldn't. "I don't personally like it" is not a good legal standard for a rule of law country to follow!
It seems like it's you who wants the legal system to be corrupt and unfair, and when things don't go your personal way you have to assume that it is only because someone else must be corrupting it.
I am willing to distinguish a difference between fraud as a colloquial definition and fraud as a legal definition, and that this SPLC scumbaggery is "colloquial fraud" but not "legal fraud." I believe I've already attempted to point that out.
It will take a great deal of convincing and actual evidence to convince me this is any different than the Trump fraud case, other than one taking place in Alabama and one taking place in New York. He recorded money spent under the wrong heading! HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT?
The law matters for the law.
The law does not matter for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. One hopes that they align often, but the law has a tendency to fall short to account for human fallibility and the variety of experiences, among other things.
My thoughts matter for this conversation regarding the SPLC being a bunch of hateful partisans committing bad behavior that is not necessarily illegal. That is separate from it being good, moral, or anything else.
I gotta say "novel legal theories" that leapfrog the need to prove an underlying felony does feel like corrupting a case. Anyways...
No, I do not want the legal system to be corrupt or unfair (any more than it already is by human nature). I do not assume that because the SPLC will likely win the case, that the law is corrupt. I am trying to distinguish between two different concepts of fraud and goodness, though I probably failed at making that sufficiently clear at the beginning of this exchange. Mea culpa.
What the SPLC did may be legal, it may not be fraud under the law, I still believe it to be bad behavior. Is this really so hard to understand? Is this distinction so impossible?
Abortion is legal. I think it's bad. I also think that there are situations where it is the least-worst option. I am unwilling to conflate "least-worst" with "actively good." Something being legal does not make it a good thing. Is this so difficult a concept?
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