DOJ Report, SPLC Indictment, and Supreme Court Showdown
New evidence of prosecutorial abuses by the Biden DOJ, a major nonprofit scandal and prosecution, and a religious liberty case poised to reshape national policy.
This week, we are covering an explosive DOJ report that details how the Biden Administration weaponized federal law against pro-life activists and how it cooperated with the abortion lobby to put those activists in prison. We also address the federal indictment of the Southern Policy Law Center, which used donor funds and fake entities to pay leaders of extremist groups – including those from the Ku Klux Klan. Also, we are diving into St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy – a case that challenges the religious discrimination of Colorado’s universal preschool program.
How the Biden Administration Weaponized Federal Law to Benefit the Pro-Abortion Lobby
The fact that the Biden Administration abused its power is no secret. What we are discovering, however, is just how badly the former administration flouted the rule of law. In a report issued last week, the DOJ detailed, based on the review of over 700,000 internal records, how the Biden DOJ weaponized federal law to punish pro-life activists and ignored attacks against pregnancy resource centers that were trying to help women and save lives.
Abortion groups – which include non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Feminist Majority Foundation – took advantages of their close relationship with the Biden Administration and its DOJ leadership to “gain internal information and push targets for FACE Act enforcement.” (The FACE Act prohibits threats, obstruction, or the use of force against (1) individuals obtaining or providing “reproductive health services;” (2) individuals exercising their religious freedoms at a place of worship. It also criminalizes the destruction or attempts to destroy “reproductive health facilities” or places of worship.)
With this access, the abortion groups would feed information about pro-life individuals to the FBI and DOJ, including dossiers on pro-life conferences and personal identifying information of “anti-choice individuals.” At times, even the FBI would observe that the abortion groups were providing information on “1st Amendment protected activity.” Yet the steady flow of information would continue, with abortion groups helping instigate investigations and prosecutions of pro-life activists. As all this transpired, pregnancy resource centers were dealing with increased threats and violence after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs which reversed Roe v. Wade. Yet the Biden DOJ refused to provide pregnancy resource clinics with the same resources as abortion clinics.
Records reviewed by the Trump Administration also establish that prosecutors in the Biden DOJ “knowingly withheld evidence” against pro-life activists charged under the FACE Act. In one case, the lawyer for the pro-life activists requested “historical data on FACE Act prosecutions to prepare their selective prosecution defense.” The DOJ’s FACE Act Task Force Director said he did not keep those kinds of records, though he had shared “substantially identical information” with a pro-abortion NGO. In cases brought against pro-life activists, Biden DOJ prosecutors also “tried to screen out jurors based on religion” and “looked for ways to screen possible jurors based on their conservative or religious views, while not inquiring about liberal counterviews.”
Consistent with their pro-abortion radicalism, the Biden DOJ sought “significantly higher sentences for pro-life defendants, while pursuing more lenient sentences against the handful of pro-abortion defendants that it charged.” Overall, the Biden DOJ demanded an average sentence of nearly 27 months for pro-life defendants, while only seeking an average of 12.3 months for pro-choice defendants.
The Biden DOJ’s hostility to the pro-life movement – and to religious liberties – was also demonstrated in what they didn’t charge. After years of ignoring attacks on pro-life pregnancy resource centers, they reversed course and prosecuted only five defendants – and only after receiving public outcry. And despite the increase in attacks against pro-life religious institutions, the Biden DOJ refused to prosecute those cases under the FACE Act.
Thankfully, after President Trump took office in January 2025, the DOJ acknowledged this lack of consistency in applying the FACE Act. President Trump issued pardons to pro-life defendants prosecuted under the Biden Administration and the DOJ dismissed its civil cases brought under the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life demonstrators.
Photo by J. Scott Applewhite, AP Photo, File
The Southern Poverty Law Center is indicted on 11 counts.
In a stunning development, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been indicted on 11 counts relating to their secret use of donor funds to pay the leaders and organizers of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation – the very groups the SPLC sought to “dismantle.”
According to the indictment, between 2014 and 2023 the SPLC funneled more than $3 million to those involved with violent extremist groups, including:
The payment of over $270,000 to a member of an online leadership group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia. This informant attended the event at the direction of the SPLC, made racist internet postings under SPLC supervision, and helped recruit and coordinate transportation for the event.
A member of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization, was paid more than $1 million by the SPLC from 2014 through 2023.
Payments to the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.
A payment of over $3,500 to a member of the Ku Klux Klan during the Klan’s litigation to attempt to take part in an Adopt-a-Highway program.
The SPLC faces charges for wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment alleges the SPLC schemed “to obtain money via donations through materially false representations and omissions about what the donations would be used for.” The SPLC’s promises to use donor money to help “dismantle” extremist groups was worse than an empty promise. Instead, the funds were – in part – used for the benefit of the leaders of violent extremist groups.
To achieve this scheme, the SPLC created “fictitious entities” to conduct financial transactions which it intended to hide the SPLC as the source of the funding. In doing so, false and misleading statements were made to an FDIC insured financial institution regarding the ownership of those accounts in violation of federal law. The utilization of these accounts, and the SPLC’s design to conceal the source and ownership of the funds the organization was paying to its informants, was part of their conspiracy to commit money laundering.
If convicted, the SPLC faces the forfeiture of all property and funds that are traceable to the offenses which could total millions of dollars.
The Supreme Court will hear a First Amendment challenge to Colorado’s discrimination against Catholic preschools.
This week, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear arguments in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy. This case involves a challenge to Colorado’s universal preschool program that pays for families to send their children to the preschool of their choice, whether public or private. Participation in this program requires a preschool to ensure that all families have an equal opportunity to enroll, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, income, or disability.
But Colorado does allow exemptions from that requirement – preschools, if they choose, can admit only “children of color” or “gender-nonconforming children” or “the LGBTQ community.” There is no similar exemption for those preschools that have admissions based on religion.
The Supreme Court will consider two questions presented in this case.
First, it will review a circuit split on how to apply laws of general applicability in the free exercise of religion context.
According to Supreme Court precedent, the First Amendment’s Free Exercise of religion Clause does not relieve an individual of the obligation to follow valid and neutral laws of general applicability. However, a law may be challenged under the First Amendment where it “lacks general applicability” and “it prohibits religious conduct while permitting secular conduct that undermines the government’s interests in a similar way,” or if it gives “a mechanism for individual exemptions.” Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 593 U.S. 522, 534 (2021).
In other words, how should a court consider exemptions given to others – in this case, LGBTQ families or those changing their “gender identity” - that aren’t also given to those acting in accordance with their religious practices?
Second, the Supreme Court will consider whether the government can exclude religious people from generally available public benefits as long as the exclusion is not explicitly religious.
It is difficult to make predictions at this point. However, based on the caselaw, we feel it is more likely than not that the Supreme Court finds that it is improper for Colorado to give exemptions for some groups, like the LGBTQ community, while denying the exemptions for those of faith
