Todd Blanche Tries to Fix SPLC Lawsuit—and Just Makes It Worse

Federal prosecutors at the Justice Department are stepping on their own toes trying to fix their indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gleefully announced the indictment against the SPLC in April, claiming at the time that the famed anti-racism group was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

The DOJ cited undercover investigations the SPLC had conducted in conjunction with law enforcement as evidence that the Montgomery-based nonprofit was funneling millions of dollars into groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the National Socialist Party of America.

The organization was charged with 11 counts 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. The SPLC has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty.

But there were considerable problems with the original indictment, which legal experts posited could make it difficult to win in court.

This week, the DOJ’s director of public affairs Emily Covington shared a superseding indictment with the media that was supposed to have fixed the errors. Instead, Covington made a grave error herself by publishing a draft version of the document and, in turn, potentially violating grand jury secrecy rules, national security journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote on her EmptyWheel blog.

The superseding indictment also warps the rationale behind the charges, arguing that they do not stem from the general practice of paying informants but rather that the SPLC had violated the law by failing to notify its donors of the operational mechanics of its informant network. But, as former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance argued, the SPLC didn’t need to.

“DOJ may find itself with egg on its face when it comes to donors’ views of how SPLC used their money,” Vance wrote Thursday in her own assessment of the new document. “They weren’t obligated to publish a roadmap explaining exactly how they infiltrate dangerous organizations. Journalists do not disclose confidential sources. Civil rights groups tracking violent extremists aren’t obligated to expose their work, which would compromise it.

“This isn’t a case like the ‘We Build The Wall’ fraud Steve Bannon and others were charged in, after they promised not to take donor money for personal use and then did,” Vance noted.

The 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.

The Pentagon’s newly hired counterterrorism official was seen on camera participating in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. 

Video analyzed by The Washington Post shows Elias Irizarry, who was 19 in 2021, crawling into the Capitol through a broken window, posing for photos in a private conference room, climbing onto a statue of former President Ronald Reagan, and leaving after 20 minutes.

 He was charged with misdemeanor trespassing before being pardoned by President Trump.  

The Post identified Irizarry in at least five videos of the insurrection.

“I am ashamed because I will always be a part of this disgrace,” Irizarry said during his 2023 sentencing. “January 6 represented something truly horrible; it was the largest attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

Now he’ll serve in a sensitive position at the Pentagon’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office, which oversees embassy security, personnel recovery, and hostage rescue, among other things.  

Irizarry isn’t the first insurrectionist to be rewarded with a job in the Trump administration. Former FBI agent and insurrectionist Jared L. Wise—who shouted “Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!” while the mob attacked law enforcement at the Capitol—is now part of Trump’s Department of Justice.

The results of Donald Trump’s most recent physical examinations omitted a hair-loss drug the president has been taking for years—raising red flags for health experts, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The glowing report on Trump’s most recent trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center included a list of medications the president takes, but did not include finasteride—the generic name of Propecia—a hair-loss drug Trump used during his first term. When the Post asked whether the president was still taking Propecia, the White House said it was not obligated to reveal the full range of medications the president was taking.

“The current report reflects all medications deemed clinically relevant to disclose at this time,” the White House said in a statement, adding that the medical report released Friday included information relevant to his ability to serve as president.

The White House insisted: “No additional undisclosed conditions or procedures materially affecting his health status were omitted from this report.”

But a range of health experts told the Post that the White House’s lack of transparency suggested that there could be other elements of the president’s health that were being kept out of view.

“It raises significant questions of what else is possibly not being revealed,” said Robert Klitzman, a psychiatrist who leads Columbia University’s master’s program in bioethics. He warned that finasteride had been linked to an increased risk of depression, which would have potential effects on the president’s performance.

“We want to make sure that we’re getting the full story in order to know that whoever occupies a position can sufficiently carry out the responsibilities of the office,” Klitzman told the Post.

Despite the fact that treatment for a cosmetic condition is less serious than treatment for a medical one, Steve Joffe, a physician and bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, pointed out that “there isn’t much downside” to disclosing the continued use of hair-loss drugs.

“There’s a certain level of openness and disclosure that people have a right to expect from someone in whom they place such profound trust,” Joffe told the Post.

Concerns over Trump’s mysterious prescription cocktail come as medical experts found his latest medical report lacked specificity where it matters. Trump’s consistently glowing results contrast directly with what Americans can see: visible bruising and rashes, his frequent on-camera naps, and the fact that he is an 80-year-old man who rants madly about how healthy he is.

President Trump escalated his control over the federal workforce Wednesday, signing an executive order to make it easier to fire government officials in senior positions.

The order reclassifies close to 8,000 federal workers in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” positions to at-will employees, allowing them to be fired without any stated reason. Most of these positions are at GS-15, the highest pay grade for federal civilian employees, coming with salaries of up to $200,000 a year.

This order covers directors, deputy directors, chiefs of staff, senior advisers, policy analysts, people who oversee the distribution of federal grants, public affairs leaders, and legislative affairs leaders.

“They’re going to be hired on the basis of merit and confidence, but if they’re messing up, then they can be removed quickly—rather than taking a year longer to get rid of them,” James Sherk of the White House Domestic Policy Council told Trump at the order’s signing ceremony.

It’s another blow to government employees, who have seen their numbers shrink drastically in Trump’s second term thanks to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative and Trump’s attempts to purge civil servants at odds with his agenda. Over 300,000 people have already lost their jobs, and this order is projected to push out another 50,000 federal employees, according to a February estimate from the Office of Personnel Management.

This executive order is the culmination of an OPM rule change that took effect in March. The senior-level jobs the administration is targeting will still remain nonpartisan, career positions but now won’t have protections such as appeals processes, allowing the White House to fire them more quickly.

“The practical implications of this action are clear,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement Wednesday. “Workers who once felt comfortable reporting waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement at their place of employment because they were protected from retaliation will now be afraid for their jobs if they speak out.”

President Trump took to Truth Social Thursday morning to rant about the recently passed war powers resolution—in which four of his own party members joined House Democrats to rebuke his war on Iran.

“Yesterday, in a meaningless vote, the House voted, 4 bad Republicans and all of the Dumocrats, to limit my War Powers, right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the War with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote. “Who would do such an unpatriotic thing. They know where the negotiations stand. The Democrats are fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome. They would rather have our Country fail than give me another, of many, victories. The four Republicans, that’s a whole other story—They’re GRANDSTANDERS! They should be ashamed of themselves.”

GOP Representatives Thomas Massie, Warren Davidson, Bryan Fitzpatrick, and Tom Barrett sided with Democrats in a 215–208 vote to adopt the resolution and send it on to the Senate.

“Many falsely claimed the War Powers Act empowers a president to wage any war for up to 90 days. That’s not true, but there are now new ways rationalize war in Iran. What they still don’t have? Congressional authorization. The oath is to our Constitution,” Davidson wrote Thursday morning. “The moral obligation is to the men and women who wage our wars. Define the mission. Authorize the mission. Accomplish the mission.”

Trump claims to be “right in the middle” of negotiations, even as the Iranian government claims there’s been “no tangible progress” made in them. The war powers resolution—which the vast majority of Republicans are against—is unlikely to actually get Trump to stop the war, as that would require his signature and an actual respect for the law. But it is a direct reflection of how the actual public feels about this war.