The excellent Patrick McKenzie has a very long article called Bits About Money on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). It is full of information about the working procedures of the bank. I will summarize. The post is divided into what I think of as two parts. First, is the SPLC committing bank fraud? Second, what is the backstory behind the case?
The first part is simple, McKenzie argues that yes the SPLC does commit bank fraud, false statements especially to a federally insured bank under 18 USC §1014–the main reason why this is not a tough call is that almost any false statement made to influence a bank, no matter how small, is illegal and can get you 30 years. In addition, banks are essentially an investigative arm of the state and have been collecting data for decades, any part of which could be incriminating. The main way the SPLC commits bank fraud is to set up fake businesses to pay confidential informants. None of these things, as far as I know, are illegal but lying to your bank about the ownership, control and purposes of accounts opened under false business names is illegal.
When Bank-1 investigated, an SPLC employee asked the bank to close several accounts and transfer the remaining balances to SPLC account. Subsequently, the SPLC president/CEO and board chair confirmed in writing that the accounts were opened for SPLC operations and operated under SPLC authority. As Patrick writes, the book is “a direct confession of bank fraud.” Therefore, the case that the SPLC paid informants through bank accounts opened under fictitious business names appears to be strong.
But the government has known about the work of SPLC whistleblowers, indeed the existence of the whistleblower program has been known to the public for many years. It’s hard to see how you could use a secret network to pay informants without hiding some information—could the SPLC just tell the bank what it was doing? It seems to me that the punishment for false bank statements should depend on the intent and purpose of the false statements but the law is not written that way. Other managers, however, would look away. Which brings us to the second part of the story.
The SPLC itself focused on banking and private sector decision-making. Let’s say that Acme Inc., a large corporation, wants to give its employees matching benefits through charitable giving. However, Acme does not want newspaper headlines like “Acme has been donated to the KKK!” So Acme contracts with a charity screening company, and that company uses a blacklist created by the SPLC. This was the norm. Amazon used the SPLC list for AmazonSmile; vendors who provide used or advertised SPLC workstations for testing; all of this gave the SPLC and the broader Change Policy coalition the power to pressure the social media, technology, and financial infrastructure industries on speech, blacklisting, and payments because they were already in the door and entrenched in their agendas.
While the SPLC targeted almost universally despised organizations like the KKK, all of this was accepted by everyone in the know, except perhaps a few die-hard libertarians. But during the wake the SPLC overplayed their hand. The SPLC and related organizations began taking on independent, Trump-linked organizations with broad support. Through a massive PR and public relations campaign they pressured social media organizations, technology firms, and financial companies to follow suit—and this wasn’t just a media campaign, the Change the Terms coalition held hundreds of meetings with high-level employees. The nature of bias made it legitimately questionable but when your partners were in charge. these things can be ignored. In perhaps the most notable part of the text, Patrick quotes a fundraising letter from the Free Press and Free Press Action (not the SPLC but part of a larger coalition):
Our efforts have brought many tangible changes. After years of pressure from the Free Press and our partners, Twitter he finally shut Trump down[.]
…Facebook initially suspended Trump “permanently” and later changed his suspension to a two-year ban. Now we are pushing the company that ban Trump forever and closing the loophole that allows the Trump PAC to fundraise and organize for him.
…PAY THE WAR. Your generosity makes our work successful. Please donate what you can today to make sure we have the resources we need to continue fighting for equitable media policies that improve people’s lives.
As Patrick notes, the fundraising letter closed with this disclaimer:
Free Press and Free Press Action are non-partisan organizations….Free Press and Free Press Action do not support or oppose any candidate for public office.
Trump won. Many people will say that the lawsuit is the result. That may be true but that does not make the impeachment case legally weak.
Read the whole thing for a case study of how the SPLC’s list and coalition work was incorporated into the decision-making processes of the private sector and more generally to see how institutional power really works.
