F.B.I. Knew Civil Rights Group Informants Helped Bring Down Extremists, Lawyers Say

The central premise of the federal charges filed last week against the Southern Poverty Law Center is that the storied civil rights organization defrauded its donors and betrayed its stated mission to fight hate groups by paying secret informants inside extremist networks.

On Tuesday, however, the law center pushed back firmly against the accusation that it sought to promote, not dismantle, far-right groups, asserting in court papers that information gleaned from its informants was shared at least three times with law enforcement agencies, including the F.B.I., resulting in arrests and prosecutions.

In fact, just two weeks before the Justice Department unsealed its indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, its lawyers met with prosecutors on the case in an effort to persuade them that the informant program, which was closed three years ago, had not been used to fund hate groups, but to hold them accountable.

During the meeting, the court papers said, the lawyers showed prosecutors evidence that the work of an S.P.L.C. informant helped the Justice Department during President Trump’s first term to secure a six-month prison term for a member of the white supremacist group Vanguard America who had lied to federal agents about his extremist ties during a background check for a security clearance.

Informants for the Southern Poverty Law Center also provided information to the F.B.I. about a member of a neo-Nazi group, the Atomwaffen Division, who had discussed attacks against Jews, gay people and others in Las Vegas and ultimately pleaded guilty to weapons charges, the court papers said. And their work formed the basis of a 45-page dossier that the S.P.L.C. gave the bureau, correctly warning that violence might erupt at the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in 2018 in Charlottesville, Va.

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The two sets of papers, filed in Federal District Court in Montgomery, Ala., were the law center’s first legal response to the 11-count indictment charging it with wire fraud, lying to banks and a conspiracy to commit money laundering.

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The court papers filed on Tuesday indicate that lawyers for the S.P.L.C. tried several times to persuade the Justice Department that the basic accusations in their case were incorrect.

Days before the indictment was unsealed, the group gave prosecutors 15,000 pages of records about its informant program in response to a grand jury subpoena. Defense lawyers claimed in their papers that the information they handed over to the government was not reflected in the charges that were ultimately filed.

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