Make New York Post a Preferred Source The federal investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center over allegations it funneled money to the very groups it was fighting against started in 2022 under President Joe Biden, court papers reveal.
The SPLC filed to have the subsequent case brought against them by the Trump administration dismissed as a “vindictive prosecution,” a motion which was struck down in August.
However, the wheels had been set in motion under Trump’s predecessor. Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Fox News in April the case had been “mysteriously closed,” but they didn’t “have any information about why.”
“The Biden Justice Department wielded a double-edged sword. Everyone knows one side was sharpened to attack Biden’s political enemies, but just as importantly the other side was dulled to prevent injury to their political friends, especially friends as powerful as the raw partisans at the SPLC,” Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center which has spent years investigating the SPLC, claimed to The Post.
The federal charges against the group — which is cash-rich, listing $787 million in assets in 2024 — center around claims they gave money to members of hate groups, which was used to keep them operating. SPLC then allegedly used these groups as examples of what they were fundraising against.
The SPLC has pleaded not guilty, maintaining they only paid confidential field sources, which was a standard investigative tool to monitor extremist threats.
A trove of the information in the government’s case comes from an informant known as “F-9,” a former member of the white separatist group National Alliance, who was also supplying the SPLC with information, court papers show.
After then turning into a federal informant, SPLC lawyers claimed he had handed over 1.2TB of data from five hard drives and two thumb drives.
They also claimed he had exchanged over 1,800 text messages and had 20 meetings with FBI and IRS agents since October 2025, when the Trump administration revived the investigation — apparently trying to insert himself into it.
During meetings with federal agents in 2025 and 2026, F-9 presented 162 pages of PowerPoint slides he assembled as “Intelligence Briefings,” included decks slapped with official FBI and IRS seals.
He behaved “as though he were an actual member of the prosecution team,” the SPLC claimed in their filing, which argued the source was only a witness in the case and should be treated as such.
The informant — previously identified by The Post as Lawrence “Scary Larry” Myers, by current and former members of the NA — was also in a relationship with director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, Heidi Beirich, who is also a defendant in the case.
This relationship appears to have become the group’s Achilles heel, as court papers filed by attorneys for the SPLC say the hatemonger heartthrob flipped on them when he was jilted by Beirich and she cut his purse strings.
“While contracting as an SPLC informant, F-9 started a meaningful personal relationship. But between December 2021 and July 2023, everything changed.
“In that timeframe, F-9 learned his income from the SPLC would be significantly reduced, his personal relationship ended, and his relationship with the SPLC was terminated,” the group’s lawyers wrote.
The SPLC and Beirich, who has also pleaded not guilty, did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
After being dumped and ditched by the SPLC, the IRS Criminal Investigation Division moved in on F-9/Myers and “he knew he faced serious criminal and financial exposure” from nearly three decades of failing to pay his taxes, the court documents show.
In text messages the hard-up Hitlerian told investigators he maxed out several credit cards, sold his car and pleaded to have his tax debt forgiven in exchange for his help, which was granted, SPLC lawyers claimed.
On Oct. 28 lawyers for the SPLC filed a motion to preserve documents and to subpoena the informant, claiming, “F-9 bears deep resentment against the SPLC and thus has a motive to provide the government only the material he thinks inculpates the SPLC.”
Text messages referenced in the new motion show Beirich’s ex-bae begging for money from federal agents in exchange for providing dirt on the SPLC, writing, “Is there a probability—not a possibility—a probability, that the FBI will pay me? They used to pay me!”
The documents also claim F-9 told feds he was in possession of six steel filing cabinets containing “handwritten notes, files, recordings” and 37,000 color photographs that he took, all housed in a storage unit where he owed $15,000 in back payments.
F-9/Myers — now a reclusive potato farmer — has been under suspicion by other members of the racist groups he’d joined since the 90s. He has not responded to The Post’s request for comment.
In 1996 he was fired from an Indiana-based right-wing militia magazine called Media Bypass after readers revolted by accusing him of being a fed.
At one time, Myers was National Alliance’s official photographer and members — who were naturally paranoid of being photographed — recalled him constantly snapping away at meet-ups and shooting portraits of founder William Pierce.
They said they were always wary of what Myers may do with all the intelligence he appeared to be gathering.
In their filing, SPLC also moaned their ex-informant stole confidential documents.
“The government seems willing to overlook F-9’s extreme biases, self-serving motives, and personal and professional misconduct, including covertly taking SPLC records and privileged information,” the lawyers wrote.
Ironically, that’s the exact thing they had paid him to do against other groups.
In the April indictment, feds alleged that in 2014, at Beirich’s direction, F-9 broke into the West Virginia headquarters of the National Alliance and stole 25 boxes of documents that were later copied and used to create a report on the SPLC’s website about the white separatist organization’s finances.
“The SPLC had for years reported this sicko’s group was essentially dead, and then they provided it with over $1 million so they could exploit the group and get rich off of their dishonest junk mail,” Walter claimed.
