MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Newly reported FBI documents suggest a conservative-backed complaint about the Southern Poverty Law Center may have been routed through Stephen Miller, raising questions about whether federal law enforcement was used to target a civil rights group in Alabama for political reasons.
Raw Story reported that the FBI material closely mirrors language in a letter from conservative groups to Miller criticizing the SPLC’s “Hate Map,” which tracks hate groups. The New York Times reported that lawyers for the SPLC say the documents indicate the inquiry was meant to punish the organization for its speech and advocacy. HuffPost reported that the FBI document copied language from the letter word for word.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, has long been one of the state’s best-known civil rights organizations. The SPLC has previously published material about Miller, including a file describing him as a far-right extremist and earlier reporting that said his emails promoted white nationalist and racist material to Breitbart editors.
The newly reported documents do not, by themselves, prove a revenge plot. But they do appear to deepen the political fallout around an inquiry that now has Miller, the FBI and the Montgomery-based SPLC at its center.