The Trump administration’s fraud prosecution against the Southern Poverty Law Center was in an Alabama courtroom for arraignment on Thursday, where the Montgomery-based civil rights group pleaded not guilty. But even ahead of that scheduled court appearance, the group’s defense lawyers had already started playing offense.

In one of its motions ahead of Thursday’s hearing, the center called out what it deemed a “false and unfairly prejudicial statement” made by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Fox News: that the government didn’t have information to suggest the group shared with law enforcement what it learned from informants. The SPLC said that claim was false, writing in its motion that its counsel provided such information to the government.

In response, the Justice Department effectively acknowledged there was at least some merit to the defense’s point. But the DOJ cited a subsequent statement Blanche made on another Fox News program, where he said over the years the group has “selectively shared information with law enforcement. That’s well-documented and there’s no dispute there.” The DOJ said that follow-up comment sufficed to address the defense allegation, “to the extent that any clarification was needed.”....

In a separate motion, the SPLC’s lawyers are seeking disclosure of the grand jury proceedings that led to the group’s indictment. The DOJ accused the group of misleading its donors about what their donations would be used for, while the defense argued the charges represent “a stunning and unremitting departure from Justice Department policy and established law.”

In the grand jury motion, the SPLC called the prosecution “as unprecedented as it is irregular,” saying the DOJ is trying to “criminalize some of the very investigative tools and programs that the SPLC has used for decades to infiltrate and dismantle violent extremist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations — tradecraft that has produced vital intelligence that has been shared with law enforcement, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Against that backdrop, the SPLC’s lawyers argued the indictment “suffers from obvious legal infirmities” and that its “particularized irregularities suggest that the grand jury was not merely misled by the government’s presentation of the law, but likely that it was actively weaponized to facilitate such charges.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the SPLC “long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine” and that the group’s “so-called ‘hate map’ has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence.” Patel’s claim followed Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September, which increased conservative pressure against the group that called Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization “a case study of the hard right.”

The SPLC’s report on the subject called TPUSA “a well-funded, hard-right organization with links to Southern Poverty Law Center-identified hard-right extremists and a tremendous amount of influence in conservative politics.” TPUSA’s main strategy, according to the SPLC, was “sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists.”