John Bickley (2:32)

Joining us now is Jeremy Tedesco, ADF senior counsel and senior VP of their counter Censorship Task Force. Jeremy, first of all, thank you so much for coming on.

Jeremy Tedesco (2:41)

My pleasure. Thanks, John.

John Bickley (2:42)

So this indictment really is a bombshell. We overused that term, but it's a true bombshell indictment here. The allegations are almost hard to believe. They're a complete 180 from what the SPLC claims to do. First, let's start with the actual indictment, and then we'll talk about some of the details of how this is playing out so far. So 11 total charges in this indictment. Can you explain those charges for us?

Jeremy Tedesco (3:09)

Yeah. There's six wire fraud charges, four related to false statements to federally chartered banks, and then one charge related to conspiracy to conceal money laundering. And so they all basically revolve around what you were talking about, which is the allegation that the SPLC is essentially asking people to fund their fight against hate groups while they're actually taking some of that money and giving it to the hate groups so they can do more hate. They're fomenting the very activities they're asking their donors to fight against is what the indictment ultimately is about.

John Bickley (3:43)

Now, the SPLC tried to get ahead of this indictment. They released a statement beforehand claiming this is just part of their informant program. They say they're just paying informants so they can stay ahead of these hate groups. The Justice Department says that's not at all what's happening here. What are the specific claims the DOJ is making to counter the SPLC's argument?

Jeremy Tedesco (4:05)

Well, I think the clearest thing that relates to that in the indictment revolves around the 2017. Everybody will remember the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. And apparently SPLC was paying one of the members of the online leadership group that put that event on. Apparently that person was even acting at the behest of and direction of splc, related to posts online and planning the event, and even facilitated the transportation of some people to that event. So, I mean, that's the. That's the clearest thing in the indictment. I think the DOJ has a lot more to prove there. And this is just the beginning of this. This is an indictment by a federal grand jury. Now, the federal government will put on their evidence, and we'll see if they can prove it.

Luke Rosiak (4:49)

Right now, the ADF has a history with the splc. And part of the reason we specifically wanted to talk to you is that you're very versed in how the SPLC has operated when it comes specifically to conservative entities and targeting them. You guys are a conservative legal group. You've suffered the consequences of some of these actions, like so many other groups. What has your team experienced? How much of a real impact has this had?

Jeremy Tedesco (5:16)

Oh, yeah, they put us on the hate map back in 2016. I mean, as a result of that, we've been smeared in the media over and over again. But we've also lost access to essential tech services. We've lost access to channels of funding. So the hate group label has real damage attached to it. At the same time, you know, the SPLC is really a bunch of clowns, so it's hard to take them seriously except for these consequences that flow from it. You know, we've won 17 cases at the Supreme Court since 2011. They've been basically slinging mud at people. And so there's one serious organization involved in this story. It's us Alliance Defending Freedom. They don't do anything beneficial. In fact, some journalists and even a former employee of spl called their hate map a fraud and a highly profitable scam. So really, this indictment shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. They've been steeped in corruption for many years now, and maybe they've been even doing illegal things as they've been, you know, operating their hate map. Fraud.

John Bickley (6:19)

Yeah.

Luke Rosiak (6:20)

For the people that aren't as familiar as we are with this hate map, what is its stated purpose?

John Bickley (6:26)

What does it actually do?

Luke Rosiak (6:27)

Why did they come up with it in the first place?

Jeremy Tedesco (6:30)

To raise money, John. I mean, I'm gonna tell you what they say the purpose is. The purpose is to smear their political enemies and destroy them. And that's what they said it was for. But yet I think people need to understand it's not just Alliance Defending Freedom on the list. It's basically every right of center advocacy organization that disagrees with the left. And TPUSA is on there, Moms for Liberty, and about nine or ten other big parents rights organizations. You know, and the Biden administration used this list to attack Catholics to go after parental rights groups. The media organizations relied on it all the time. Corporations rely on it all the time to make business decisions. So these kinds of things really need to come to a stop. And look, nobody needed this indictment to stop relying on the splc. But this indictment should close the book for anybody who was thinking, I wonder if we should continue to rely on their information. Their information is garbage.

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John Bickley (7:58)

Now. Since this indictment was handed down this week, some high profile examples of people that have given a lot of money are starting to come out. George Clooney's foundation gave a million dollars to I guess unintentionally fund hate groups. If these allegations are true. So look, we had you on a couple of weeks ago to talk about global censorship threats. The SPLC does play into the censorship effort. We've looked at this from our end as a news entity. We see a lot of other outlets, the legacy outlets use the SPLC as an authoritative source to smear effectively conservatives. How has their operation been weaponized and used for censorship purposes?

Jeremy Tedesco (8:39)

Yeah, they're an essential cog in the wheel of censorship, especially online censorship. And the reality is the way the censors operate, especially the government censors, is they try to launder their censorship through nonprofit organizations who have credibility. I mean, the SBLC doesn't have any credibility, but they still do have a lot of credibility, I think, or maybe just name recognition based on their past efforts. And so what happens is they put out the information through the hate map of the organizations that are, you know, hateful and should be deprived of financial services, deprived of technological, you know, services and things like that. And then companies or even media organizations rely on those things to make decisions. And so these nonprofit organizations are really essential cogs in this censorship industrial complex. And so splc, if they were to ultimately meet their demise because of this, it would be a major blow to the censorship complex here in the US I think one other thing your listeners should know is the SPLC is exporting their whole model overseas. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, I think it's called, was actually co founded by by a former high ranking SPLC employee named Heidi Barrick. And so they're over in Europe setting the rules as a nonprofit over there for online speech and discourse. And the European Union and the UK is relying on SPLC type organizational outputs to decide who can speak online. So it's really an insidious thing. And so even if SPLC ultimately comes to an end here in the United States, the fight continues, right?

Luke Rosiak (10:21)

It's not over yet for sure. We talked to Luke Rosiak, our investigative reporter, earlier this week, and he said that they have the SBLC has something like $700 million tucked away. A lot of this is in tax havens overseas, which is very curious for a nonprofit to do something like that. I wonder if part of the plan is to move the operation overseas with so much heat here. I guess we'll see. Now, you mentioned the corporations that have used the SPLC or cited them like Nike, Apple, Amazon or some of them. What do you see in terms of the fallout here with corporations?

Jeremy Tedesco (10:57)

Quite a few companies actually, unfortunately, use them to screen employee matching gift donations and say, look, you know, you can give to any nonprofit unless they're on the hate group list. And so this year we had several corporations do the right thing even before this indictment came out, like Salesforce and Meta and a few other big corporations decided to end their reliance on SPLC in that context. But there are other corporations that continue to rely on them. Starbucks, Caterpillar. And so there's a lot more work to do in that space. I think this indictment gives us another opportunity to go back to them and say, look, we told you all the reasons you shouldn't rely on the splc. Now they're under federal indictment for wire fraud and making illegal statements to banks and playing a shell game with their money, their donors money. So, you know, at some point, I think the corporations will ultimately all just walk away from the splc. And if that happens, they lose a lot of their influence and a lot of their toxicity will no longer be relevant to American lives.

Luke Rosiak (12:00)

Now back to the legal side of this. Is there anything from your particular perspective that you believe is being underreported about this case that needs to be heard by our audience?

Jeremy Tedesco (12:12)

Well, I think nobody should be surprised. The SPLC has been criticized for decades by people on the right and the left for the apparent corruption inside that organization. In 2019, there's a huge uproar when their employees came out and said it was reported everywhere that there was a huge problem with racism and sexism inside the organization. Employees, after that story came out a few years later came out and said nothing happened. They just swept it all under the rug. And the problems with the hate map being a fraud and a scam have been pointed out for years. As well by their own employees. So, you know, now it looks like they might have been operating this scam in a way that was illegal. I don't think that should surprise anybody. Ultimately, the DOJ will have to prove that out. But you know, this is just the next instance in a long line of corruption we've seen from the sblc.

Luke Rosiak (13:07)

We'll see if the government is able

John Bickley (13:10)

to land this one.

Luke Rosiak (13:11)

Some very serious charges that are laid out here.

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John Bickley (13:43)

Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us.

Jeremy Tedesco (13:45)

Yep. Thanks, John.

Mint Mobile / Advertisement Voice (13:47)

That was Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom. And this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire.