Biden DOJ Sought Direction From Leftist Group That Put Turning Point USA on a ‘Hate Map’ Shortly Before Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

Imagine a leftist group with ties to Antifa puts conservatives and Christians on a “hate map” with defunct chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, and that map inspires an act of terrorism and would go on to contribute to the demonization of Turning Point USA ahead of the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Now, imagine that, rather than investigating such a group, the Justice Department sidles up to it—asking these radical leftists for direction on how to track “civil rights matters.” Imagine the feds host quarterly meetings with this group, cultivating close relationships with its leaders, and inviting its staff to train prosecutors on combatting “hate crimes.”

It strains credulity, doesn’t it? How could federal law enforcement become so blind to the obvious bias and destructive influence of such an organization? How could the American people put up with an administration that would weaponize justice against conservatives in this way?

Longtime readers will rightly suspect that I’m talking about the Southern Poverty Law Center and its relationship with the Biden administration.

I thought I was long past being surprised by any new evidence about this horrifying relationship. After all, I wrote the first story on it back in January 2024, and it formed the inspiration for my second book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”

Yet, America First Legal recently released another tranche of documents (obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests) shedding yet more light on this relationship, and this evidence surprised me yet again.

Kristen Clarke

Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general who headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Joe Biden, reached out to SPLC President Margaret Huang for a 15-minute phone call in October 2022, seeking to connect and hear “if there are federal civil rights matters of concern that we should be tracking.”

She was asking for guidance from the SPLC.

This email confirms that Huang had the kind of relationship with federal authorities that she bragged about in a meeting with donors back in 2021. She said that “many agencies in the new Biden administration” had reached out to “solicit our expertise” to “help shape the policies … to counter the domestic terrorism threat.”

DOJ Buddies With SPLC

The close relationship did not just extend to the heads of the Civil Rights Division and the SPLC, however. Michael Lieberman, senior policy counsel for “hate & extremism” at the SPLC, reached out to Robert Moossy Jr., deputy assistant attorney general at the Civil Rights Division, with a message suggesting a close relationship back in April 2023.

“Is it time to reinvigorate our coffee and Danish meet up across from Justice?” Lieberman asked. “I hope we can do that soon.”

As The Daily Signal previously reported, Lieberman reached out to Moossy again in June 2023, offering an embargoed copy of the SPLC’s “hate map” for 2022, which added parental rights groups, including Moms for Liberty, to the map.

The information transfer went both ways. In December 2023, Moossy sent an embargoed copy of the FBI’s annual “hate crimes” report to Lieberman.

America First Legal also obtained documents showing that Lieberman took part in a “Quarterly Civil Rights Meeting” with the DOJ—suggesting he and other SPLC staffers enjoyed recurring contact with the Civil Rights Division, about every three months.

America First Legal also obtained an official schedule for Clarke’s March 2023 trip to Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, showing that she toured the Southern Poverty Law Center’s headquarters and its civil rights museum in Montgomery. The Daily Signal previously reported on documents showing plans for this meeting.

Other documents also confirmed The Daily Signal’s prior reporting that R.G. Cravens, manager of research and analysis at the SPLC’s Intelligence Project (which publishes the “hate map”), spoke at a conference for Justice Department prosecutors on Nov. 7, 2023.

A program for the prosecutor event noted that Cravens would focus on “the anti-LGBTQ movement” and “help investigators and prosecutors identify potential evidence and motivations for bias crime.”

Many critics have called the SPLC anti-Christian because it brands Christian groups “anti-LGBTQ hate groups.” The SPLC long defended itself against this charge, presenting as “evidence” against it that the SPLC did not add Focus on the Family to the “hate map.” Yet, earlier this year, it added Focus on the Family to the “hate map.”

Cravens himself justified putting Focus on the Family on the “hate map” by suggesting that the traditional Christian position on LGBTQ+ issues was both “false” and “dangerous.”

The Big Picture

Under Biden, the Justice Department acted on a memo comparing concerned parents to domestic terrorists. It prosecuted pro-life protesters while largely turning the other way as pro-abortion radicals vandalized pro-life pregnancy centers and Catholic churches.

This week, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed that the FBI collected cellphone data on Republican senators as part of the Arctic Frost investigation—the probe that formed the basis of special counsel Jack Smith’s electors case against President Donald Trump.

Even so, this close relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center strikes me as one of the worst abuses, as it reveals among officials tasked with law enforcement the utter contempt for law-abiding conservatives who disagree with the Left’s agenda.

Thankfully, the FBI under Kash Patel has distanced itself from this group, but I fear that its influence will return under a future administration.

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