‘DEFAMATORY’: Swing-State Newspaper Issues Embarrassing Correction After Branding Conservative a ‘Hate Group’

D.A. King, an immigration enforcement activist whose defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center is proceeding in court, sent a legal demand letter to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, requesting a correction when the newspaper called his organization an “anti-immigration hate group.” The newspaper, which skews liberal, issued a correction Friday and admitted King’s legal victory in court, despite not covering it at the time it happened.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the paper of record in and around Georgia’s capital city, mentioned King’s group, the Dustin Inman Society, as an aside in an Oct. 7 article about Katy Stamper, who won the Democratic primary in Georgia’s 11th Congressional District. Democrats now support a write-in candidate, claiming Stamper won the primary on false pretenses.

“A search of activity under her birth name, Karen Sacandy, which Stamper legally changed in 2019, showed that she previously was aligned with a Marietta-based anti-immigration hate group,” The Journal-Constitution’s Washington correspondent, Tia Mitchell, wrote. Mitchell went on to include links to the Dustin Inman Society’s website, without mentioning the society or explaining why the paper characterized it as an “anti-immigration hate group.”

The Dustin Inman Society, which advocates enforcing immigration law and combats illegal immigration, has three legal immigrants on its board of advisors: Mary Grabar (from Slovenia); Maria Litland (from Austria); and Sabine Durden-Coulter (from Germany). The society takes its name from a 16-year-old Georgia boy killed in a 2000 car crash caused by an illegal immigrant.

King’s sent a demand letter on Oct. 18 and the paper issued a correction on Friday.

“The left-wing AJC could have saved itself a lot of time and trouble if they weren’t so diligent in their effort to insert a smear on the Dustin Inman Society into an unrelated story about a congressional candidate they don’t like,” King told The Daily Signal in a written statement on Friday. “Today’s lengthy retraction/correction reveals that crack AJC reporter Tia Mitchell got almost nothing right in her hit paragraph.”

King noted that when a federal judge allowed his lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center to move forward in 2023, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution did not cover the story, but the correction to the article mentions that legal development.

“In their correction, the editors had to explain the fact that we have a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC because they decided not to cover that story when the court advanced our case in early 2023,” he told The Daily Signal.

“Enforcement of American immigration laws is not ‘anti-immigration’ or ‘hate,'” King added.

“This smear is an ongoing and retaliatory habit for the staff at the AJC,” King previously told The Daily Signal. “They know it’s false and have had to run corrections many times over the years telling readers that we are aimed at illegal immigration and are not somehow ‘anti-immigration.’”

Where Did AJC Get the Idea?

King is already fighting to restore his reputation in court after one left-leaning organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, branded the Dustin Inman Society a “hate group.”

The SPLC, which routinely brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups” and puts them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, branded the society an “anti-immigrant hate group” in 2018. Yet back in 2011, the SPLC told The Associated Press that it didn’t consider the society a “hate group.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which advocates lessening immigration restrictions, registered a lobbyist to oppose a bill the society supported. The SPLC marked the society as a “hate group” around the same time.

King sued the SPLC for defamation, and a federal judge allowed the lawsuit to move to the discovery process.

As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” a terrorist used the organization’s “hate map” to attack a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., in 2012, and a former SPLC staffer called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.” Many defamation lawsuits against the SPLC have failed, however, in part because few plaintiffs before King could prove that the organization had reason to suspect the “hate group” label was false.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution didn’t cite the SPLC in its attack on the Dustin Inman Society, and it didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this story.

In Competition With the SPLC?

King previously told The Daily Signal that the newspaper is echoing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attack but setting itself up as a separate arbiter of “hate.”

“Since we began our battle against illegal immigration here in 2005, the AJC has migrated from merely being biased, liberal and agenda-driven to blooming into apparent competition with the despicable SPLC,” he said. “They have now apparently taken it upon themselves to bypass the leftist establishment smear artists and classify pro-enforcement political opponents who talk back as operating an ‘anti-immigration hate group’ themselves—including those who are immigrants.”

King said the newspaper was engaging in a double standard: condemning his organization as a “hate group” while celebrating those on the Left who advocate amnesty for illegal aliens. He cited the Georgia Association of Elected Officials, which goes by the acronym GALEO and describes itself as focusing “on increasing civic participation of the Latinx community and developing prominent Latino leaders throughout Georgia.”

“In the meantime,” King said of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “they label anti-enforcement, far-left groups such as the notorious GALEO that publicly protest against immigration enforcement as ‘civil rights groups.’”

King also noted that the AJC paid to sponsor the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund gala in 2004. Mario Obledo, MALDEF’s co-founder, had suggested that non-Hispanic, white California residents should move “back to Europe.”

When then-President Bill Clinton gave Obledo the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, a man in the audience asked, “You also made the statement that California is going to become a Hispanic state and if anyone doesn’t like it they should leave. Did you say that?”

“I did,” Obledo replied. “They ought to go back to Europe.”

“The AJC has openly promoted open borders and helped this far-left, anti-borders group with fundraising,” King told The Daily Signal. “Just because MALDEF founder Mario Obledo called for Americans who didn’t agree with his plan for California and saying those who didn’t ‘ought to go back to Europe’ didn’t stop AJC from serving as ‘dinner chair’ for a MALDEF funder gala here.”

“There once was a time when I could get a pro-enforcement guest column on their opinion page,” he lamented of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Letter

Todd McMurtry, the defamation lawyer who represents King, sent the demand letter to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week.

“Through use of internet links, the AJC article wrongfully characterizes the Dustin Inman Society as a ‘Marietta-based anti-immigration hate group,’” McMurtry wrote. “This characterization is false, defamatory, and published with actual malice.”

“The Dustin Inman Society pushes for secure borders, is not ‘anti-immigration’ and its proprietors do not hate anyone,” McMurtry added in the letter. “Rather, DIS advocates for enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and actively opposes unlawful immigration. This distinction is crucial and well-known to staff at your publication.”

McMurtry laid out the society’s position on immigration, saying “it supports sustainable levels of legal immigration through established channels”; it “opposes unlawful immigration due to various societal concerns”; and it “defends legal immigrants when media attempt to blur the difference between them and illegal aliens.” He also noted that legal immigrants serve on the society’s board.

McMurtry demanded that the newspaper immediately retract the “defaming statement,” publish “a prominent apology,” and “cease and desist from further defamatory characterizations of the Dustin Inman Society.”

The letter warned that “failure to comply with these demands may result in further legal action.”

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include the retraction and to correctly state the nature of the society’s board.

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