Lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Center have asked a US judge to let them subpoena a former informant who supplied material to the Justice Department, arguing that investigators treated him as an extension of the prosecution rather than as a witness.
The defence claims the informant, identified in court filings as “F-9”, handed over documents, recordings and intelligence briefings without the government first obtaining a subpoena or search warrant.
In a motion, the SPLC’s lawyers asked the judge to require F-9 to preserve all his original material and allow the organisation’s legal team to subpoena him directly. They said he had acknowledged having a “house full of documents”, some of which he had considered shredding.
“To be clear, F-9 should have been merely a witness in this case,” the lawyers wrote. “But the government has treated him like part of the prosecutorial team itself, choosing to allow F-9 to decide which of the documents, recordings, and photographs in his possession he will produce, and how and when he will produce them.”
Claims over evidence supplied to investigators
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on 11 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors allege that it defrauded donors and misled banks by creating shell accounts to funnel money to insiders who belonged to the same hate groups it had pledged to dismantle.
The organisation has pleaded not guilty. Its former executive Heidi Beirich, who was later charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank, has also pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors allege that Beirich had a romantic relationship with F-9, whom they describe as an SPLC informant who infiltrated the neo-Nazi group National Alliance and broke into its headquarters to take documents.
The defence says F-9 was facing possible tax prosecution after failing to pay income tax for 30 years when he began co-operating with the Justice Department. He spoke to investigators in March 2022, when the case was initially under investigation, but no charges were filed at that stage. The SPLC’s lawyers say he resumed discussions with the department in 2025 after the case was revived.
Since November 2025, F-9 has met government investigators more than 20 times, including at least four in-person meetings, according to the court filing. The lawyers also said he exchanged about 1,800 text messages with the lead FBI and IRS agents.
They said F-9 had provided four “Intelligence Briefings”, accompanied by 162 pages of PowerPoint slides, which examined possible charges against the SPLC, identified potential witnesses and suggested further lines of investigation.
The filing argues that some of the material was difficult to understand. One slide contained a flow chart with mathematical notation which, the lawyers said, left it “entirely unclear what some of the information means”.
The defence further alleges that F-9 supplied evidence selectively, including clips from secret recordings despite possessing the full versions, and appeared to send only material supporting his interpretation of events.
“At the center of this baseless investigation is an informant with every incentive to tell the government what it wants to hear,” SPLC lawyers Abbe Lowell and Addy Schmitt said in a joint statement.
They alleged that F-9 blamed the organisation for his financial problems and gave investigators “a one-sided and incomplete story” in return for broad immunity, which they said prosecutors were prepared to provide.
The Justice Department was contacted for comment.
