Federal prosecutors’ stunning indictment of a left-wing activist group for alleged financial crimes is reverberating in Georgia’s 2026 Senate race, with Republicans targeting Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., for his past ties to the organization.
The Department of Justice brought criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center in April for allegedly defrauding its donors by secretly transferring money to extremist groups with the goal of infiltrating and monitoring their activities.
Ossoff, the most vulnerable Senate Democrat running for re-election in 2026, is endorsed by the law center’s 501(c)(4) arm. The group contributed more than $700,000 to his campaign account in 2020, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
The Georgia Democrat has also praised the group’s purported efforts to combat racism.
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“Thank you for decades of work defending civil rights in the United States,” Ossoff said in a video celebrating the nonprofit group’s 50th anniversary in November 2021.
“I’m deeply concerned, like many of you, by the rising level of polarization, hatred and mistrust in our society,” he added. “We must recommit to the path of love, tolerance and peaceful coexistence if we are to flourish as a nation and as a world.”
During that time, federal prosecutors allege that instead of combating extremism, the SPLC was providing financial support to organizations that spread it.
Between 2014 and 2023, the Alabama-based organization paid more than $3 million to informants belonging to the United Klans of America, the Aryan Nation and other neo-Nazi groups, according to the 11-count indictment, which included charges of bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. The group allegedly concealed the payments by setting up bank accounts under fictitious names and did not inform federal law enforcement about their activities.
One informant, who the law center paid more than $270,000, was a member of an online group that helped plan the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to the indictment. Federal prosecutors said the informant attended the rally at the direction of the SPLC and “made racist postings” on behalf of the left-wing nonprofit.
Thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer died after a man drove his vehicle through a crowd of counter-protesters while injuring nearly 20 others.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference in April. The group, he added, “was instead allegedly manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”
SPLC interim CEO Bryan Fair slammed the charges as politically motivated and has argued the since-defunct program “saved lives.”
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The Republican National Committee (RNC) hammered Ossoff’s ties to the law center.
“If Jon Ossoff is too spineless to reject the Southern Poverty Law Center’s endorsement and return their money, he’s complicit in funneling millions to violent extremist groups like the KKK,” RNC spokeswoman Emma Hall said. “Anyone who doesn’t condemn these indicted fraudsters is wrong for Georgia — plain and simple.”
Ossoff has not commented on the grand jury indictment. His campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Ossoff is facing a crowded field of GOP challengers ahead of November.
Reps. Mike Collins and Buddy Carter, R-Ga., and former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley are vying for the Republican nomination in an increasingly bitter three-way contest. President Donald Trump has yet to intervene and a significant chunk of the state’s Republican voters are undecided, according to recent polling.
The GOP candidates have raised just a fraction of the Ossoff campaign’s $31.7 million war chest.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its race rating to “lean Democrat” in Ossoff’s favor earlier in April, citing an “increasingly sour national environment” for Republicans.