The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) advised prosecutors from former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) on “disturbing trends … within the anti-LGBTQ movement” at a 2023 “hate crimes symposium,” the Daily Signal reported Monday.
Drawing on documents obtained by America First Legal (AFL) via a Freedom of Information Act request, senior editor Tyler O’Neil informed readers of just one instance among many in which the Biden DOJ collaborated with the SPLC.
The SPLC, which actually performed some valuable services early in its existence before becoming consumed with fighting “hate,” famously publishes a “hate map.” While genuine haters such as the Ku Klux Klan appear on the map, it largely consists of conservative, libertarian, and Christian organizations. The John Birch Society, the parent organization of The New American, is one of the SPLC’s prime targets. A search for this supposed “conspiracy propagandist” group on the SPLC’s website returns 191 hits.
It’s only natural, then, that the Biden administration would hook up with such an organization. According to O’Neil:
The Justice Department repeatedly engaged with the SPLC during the Biden administration. DOJ staff seemed receptive to meeting with the SPLC shortly after the group put the parental rights group Moms for Liberty on the “hate map” in 2023. [Then-assistant attorney general and head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Kristen] Clarke appears to have met with the SPLC in March 2023.
DOJ, SPLC, and LGBTQ
On October 27, 2023, Robert Moossy, Jr., then-deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, sent an email to Clarke. (According to a LinkedIn post, Moossy retired in December and took “a year off to travel with [his] husband Kipp.” Two months later, Clarke joined the faculty of the Howard University School of Law.)
Moossy’s email concerned an upcoming Hate Crimes Symposium at the DOJ’s National Advocacy Center in Columbia, S.C. He wrote:
From November 7-9, 2023, the Criminal Section will hold a hate crimes symposium focusing on the investigation and prosecution of federal hate crimes. More than 100 [assistant U.S. attorneys] and [criminal division] Trial Attorneys are anticipated to attend as well as agents from the FBI’s Hate Crimes/Domestic Terrorism Fusion Cell.
Moossy noted that while most of the speakers would be DOJ attorneys, “staff from the SPLC will also present.”
Specifically, according to the symposium’s agenda, R.G. Cravens of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project (which publishes the “hate map”),
will provide an overview of important, disturbing trends and developments within the anti-LGBTQ movement, including the surge in threats and violence against transgender people, children, and their caregivers. By focusing on commonalities in rhetoric, symbols, locations, and actors involved in violent anti-LGBTQ attacks and targeted intimidation, this presentation will help investigators and prosecutors identify potential evidence and motivations for bias crime.
Cravens wasn’t the only pro-LGBTQ speaker at the conference. Civil Rights Division trial attorney Kathryn Gilbert gave a talk on using “cultural competence and appropriate terminology” when interviewing LGBTQ victims. Fellow trial attorney Laura Gilson spoke on “overcoming hurdles to prosecuting transgender violence.” Clearly, the DOJ wanted to use all the tools at its disposal to benefit this small but politically powerful group of people.
Biden Its Time
It was not always thus. Although the SPLC had advised the DOJ during the Obama administration, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in 2018 that the Trump administration would dissolve such partnerships.
Meanwhile, recalled O’Neil, the SPLC continued to be mired in controversy, from its “hate map” being used by a terrorist to “target the Family Research Council” to the firing of “its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal” to its paying “millions in defamation settlements.”
Despite all this, with the return of a Democrat to the White House in 2021, the welcome mat was once more put out for the SPLC. “Biden nominated an SPLC attorney to a top federal judgeship,” wrote O’Neil. “The Biden White House welcomed SPLC leaders and staff at least 18 times.”
And what better way to get back at Biden’s political opponents than to sic the DOJ, with the eager assistance of the SPLC, on them? The existence of federal hate-crime laws made it all the easier.
Hate Crimes Have No Place Here
In fact, there should be no federal hate-crime laws at all. As libertarian Sheldon Richman observed, “The Constitution does not give the federal government general authority in criminal law enforcement,” so any “hate crimes” should be prosecuted by state and local authorities. Beyond that,
there is no definition [of] “hate crime” that does not make feelings a criminal offense. In typical hate-crime legislation, someone committing a murder or assault faces additional punishment if it can be proved that the perpetrator bore his victim ill will for reasons relating to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and similar considerations.
Case in point: Gilson’s presentation examined how federal lawyers prosecuted three men who had shot paintballs at a transgender woman “because of her gender identity” — and shared video of the attack on social media — for hate crimes. Merely charging them with assault, which is not (or should not be) a federal crime, was not enough. For assaulting a member of a politically privileged class, the men had to be punished more severely.
President Donald Trump got the SPLC out of the DOJ in his first term; it’s time to do it again. Perhaps more importantly, Trump and his fellow Republicans in Congress ought to repeal all federal hate-crime legislation.
