SPLC seeks sanctions over DOJ unsigned indictment leak

SPLC seeks – The Southern Poverty Law Center asked a federal judge to consider sanctions after it said the Justice Department shared an unsigned, unstamped draft superseding indictment with media before the filing was publicly docketed. SPLC argues the breach of grand jury

On Tuesday night. the Justice Department told the public it had obtained a superseding indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center. By the time journalists were weighing in. SPLC says something else was already circulating inside media circles: an unsigned. unstamped copy that had not been publicly docketed.

Now, the nonprofit wants a federal judge to treat that sequence as more than an embarrassment.

In court filings on Wednesday. SPLC’s attorneys asked the judge to consider sanctioning federal prosecutors after they alleged the unofficial version was improperly shared with journalists before it was publicly docketed. in violation of federal grand jury secrecy rules. They also asked the court to order the Justice Department to explain why the prosecutors handling the case should not face sanctions.

The Justice Department’s Tuesday announcement said the superseding indictment against SPLC included new allegations about how the organization allegedly used donations to infiltrate hate groups. The filing. as described in the announcement. alleges that the money helped buy materials for cross burnings and for Ku Klux Klan robes and hats.

SPLC’s attorneys do not dispute the existence of a superseding indictment. Their dispute is over what was sent to media before the rules were followed.

The new indictment still does not name any additional defendants. It retains 11 counts of wire fraud. bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering—charges that were already laid out in SPLC’s original April indictment accusing the nonprofit of paying informants in extremist groups without disclosing the practice to donors or banks.

According to SPLC’s account, the version distributed to journalists was not the one returned by the grand jury and docketed on Wednesday.

SPLC said the Justice Department “released an unsigned. unstamped Microsoft Word version of a draft superseding indictment to members of the media—before unsealing any legitimate filing and before alerting (or providing a copy to) defense counsel.” The group added that the department was putting “putting media strategy before the sacrosanct rules on grand jury secrecy.”.

SPLC’s lawyers argued that giving the public details from a document not yet formally unsealed and docketed can tilt the playing field.

They wrote that revealing information before it is formally made public could prejudice SPLC by creating a “one-sided narrative that the SPLC could not address without compounding the harm.”

The filings also describe the shared file itself. SPLC’s lawyers said the Microsoft Word version sent to news media contained the underlying metadata of the DOJ attorneys who had “authored” and “last modified” the document on Tuesday morning.

They further said the draft contained some language that was not included in the superseding indictment returned by the grand jury and publicly docketed on Wednesday.

SPLC also told the court that when its attorneys reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Alabama on Tuesday evening to ask why reporters were seeking comment on an unsigned copy of the indictment. the lead prosecutor “could not explain it and needed to gather more information.”.

In a passage meant to underscore how unusual the conduct was to SPLC’s legal team. its lawyers wrote: “In decades of collective practice. including serving as prosecutors at DOJ. none of the SPLC’s counsel has ever seen anything remotely like what DOJ did last night—distributing what turned out not to be the actual superseding indictment returned by the grand jury and docketed today.”.

They added that the behavior, in their view, “violates the letter and spirit of the federal rules, DOJ’s own policies, and even common-sense notions of professionalism to abide by the normal court procedure and treat those accused of wrongdoing fairly.”

CBS News reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

For now, the case turns less on the underlying allegations—how donations were allegedly used—and more on timing: what was shared, when it was shared, and whether the process that is supposed to protect secrecy around grand jury work was followed before the media got a version of the document.

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