The Southern Poverty Law Center’s recent indictment also raises questions about Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger. The two are intertwined because Spanberger appointed as a top safety official the FBI agent who used SPLC research to target traditional Catholics as extremist threats in the infamous “Richmond Memo.” Spanberger should now explain how such a discredited memo and such an indicted organization could come together in her safety pick.
Following an investigation by the FBI and IRS, the DOJ obtained an indictment “charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment of money laundering.” Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC is charged with channeling over $3 million to “various extremist groups” it purported to be opposing.
Said the DOJ’s press announcement: “According to the indictment starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent and extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction. Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.”
Stated acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, “the SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”
It is duplicity of the highest order. One of those duped by the SPLC was none other than the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office.
According to the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, the FBI’s Richmond office took SPLC’s word on extremism when it came to traditional Catholics and cited the SPLC to produce the infamous “Richmond Memo,” among other documents that used “derogatory terms like ‘radical traditionalist catholic.’”
The Richmond Memo stated: “FBI Richmond assesses the increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists in radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues to tripwire and source development.”
The FBI’s surveillance of Catholics included spying on a priest and interviewing a choir director.
The FBI special agent who led the Richmond office that produced the memo (deemed to be a violation of professional standards) was Stanley Meador. FBI leadership attempted to distance themselves from the memo once it was leaked and ordered Meador to take the memo down. Meador would be forced out of the FBI’s Richmond office in 2025.
In contrast to FBI leadership, and despite the controversy the memo created—a controversy that spanned several years and spawned numerous congressional hearings and an internal FBI investigation—for the FBI and the specific office Meador had headed, Spanberger ran toward Meador, tapping him to be Virginia’s secretary of public safety and homeland security.
From the beginning, there were ample questions about Spanberger’s appointment of Meador.
First, why did she choose someone who had been at the center of such a controversy when numerous others more qualified must have existed? It is hard to imagine Spanberger embracing someone who had been so personally involved with surveilling other religious groups.
Second, why did Spanberger do so after having run for governor as a moderate? Choosing Meador was hardly designed to steer clear of controversy. Instead, it seemed a deliberate attempt to invite it. This hardly seems the goal of someone who fashions herself as being a moderate.
Third, it was not as though Spanberger did not already have controversy when it came to law enforcement. Recall that Jay Jones, who was elected to be attorney general with Spanberger on the Democratic ticket, had already made national news with his comments about giving a fellow Virginia lawmaker “two bullets to the head,” as well as a reckless driving conviction and questions about his community service sentence. Adding another controversial figure like Meador in such a sensitive area as enforcing the law seemed to lack even basic political judgment.
Now, more questions surface following the current charges against the SPLC over its hate-for-hire, decade-long scheme.
Why did Meador so willingly accept such a spurious source as the SPLC to produce a memo that violated professional standards? Was Meador simply as gullible as many SPLC donors were? Or was/is Meador such an ideologue that he wanted to believe the SPLC’s hateful accusations?
Following the indictment against the SPLC, what is Meador’s explanation for trusting it as a source, a source later investigation has shown to be intentionally and habitually deceptive? And what is Spanberger’s reaction to a top security advisor having so heavily utilized the SPLC? Does this undermine her confidence in him? And if not, shouldn’t it? Or do Spanberger and Meador still stand by the SPLC as a truthful source?
It is not as though Spanberger didn’t come into office with law enforcement baggage in the form of Jay “Two Bullets” Jones. However, Jones was elected; Meador she selected. The shared similarity appears to be the identifying and targeting of enemies.
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, "Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left," from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.