A “public charity” that purports to be “neutral” and provide online “nonprofit information to a broad audience at no cost to those users” has begun slamming Christian and other conservative organizations based on the recommendation of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which itself has been linked to domestic terror and once put Ben Carson on its list of “haters.”
Any organization that claims to be a charity and teams up with the Southern Poverty Law Center is like a baby products business teaming up with Planned Parenthood.
SPLC also exhibited behavior so egregious that it was reprimanded by the far-left administration of Barack Obama.
Judicial Watch, citing a letter to Michael M. Hethmon, senior counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, and others, said the DOJ reprimand came in 2016 but was “kept quiet at the agency’s request.”
“[It] involves the SPLC’s atrocious behavior during immigration court proceedings. Two groups that oppose illegal immigration, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), were the target of personal, baseless and below-the-belt attacks from SPLC attorneys during official immigration court proceedings. The SPLC filed a motion attacking and defaming the two respected nonprofits by describing them as ‘white supremacist,’ ‘eugenicist,’ ‘anti-Semitic,’ and ‘anti-Catholic.’ In its reprimand the DOJ says it is troubled by the conduct of SPLC lawyer Christopher Strawn and that his conduct ‘overstepped the bounds of zealous advocacy and was unprofessional.’ Furthermore, SPLC made ‘uncivil comments that disparaged FAIR and its staff,’ the rebuke states, adding that the language constitutes frivolous behavior and doesn’t aid in the administration of justice,” Judicial Watch explained.
“The Obama administration kept the reprimand confidential and asked FAIR and IRLI to keep it under wraps. In the meantime, SPLC continues to publicly trash the groups and escalate attacks against them by putting them on the official hate list. The executive director and general counsel of IRLI, Dale Wilcox, says his nonprofit and FAIR will keep fighting for immigration policies that put America first. ‘The SPLC’s latest tactic in its never-ending witch-hunt and the federal government’s resulting reprimand should send the following message to the mainstream media,’ Wilcox said: ‘Stop using the SPLC as a legitimate hate-watch source in your news coverage. That a cabal of biased list-keepers can play such an important role in distorting the immigration debate in this country is testament to the utter failure of much of the mainstream media which frequently publishes their inflammatory commentary and refuses to question their baseless methods or financial motivations,’” Judicial Watch said.
The letter explained the DOJ stopped short of “formal disciplinary proceeding[s],” instead opting for the rebuke in the letter.
“We take this opportunity to remind the attorney practitioners involved in this misconduct that practitioners before EOIR should be striving to be civil and professional in their interactions with each other, the public, the board and immigration courts. Attorneys owe a duty of professionalism to their clients, opposing parties and their counsel, the courts, and the public as a whole.”
