Gutfeld Hit Tarlov With One DOJ Finding That Proved Her SPLC Defense Was Built on a Lie

The Southern Poverty Law Center spent decades calling everyone else a hate group.

Now the Justice Department just indicted them on 11 counts for funding the very extremists they claimed to fight.

Tarlov tried to defend them on air and Gutfeld had one DOJ finding that ended the argument.

The SPLC Paid Someone to Help Plan Charlottesville While Raising Millions to Fight the KKK

A federal grand jury returned the indictment Tuesday in Montgomery, Alabama. Prosecutors allege the SPLC secretly diverted more than $3 million in donor money to eight individuals – some of them active members of the KKK, the Aryan Nations, and the National Socialist Party – the same groups the SPLC was publicly fundraising to destroy.

That alone would be damning enough.

But then came the detail that changes everything. One of those individuals was a member of the online "leadership chat group" that coordinated the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. The DOJ says he was paid more than $270,000 over eight years – and attended the rally at the SPLC's direction.

Greg Gutfeld didn't mince words on The Five Wednesday.

"This makes the Jussie Smollett hoax look like amateurs."

He was just getting started.

"Did the media fall for it or did they go along with it? They went along with it. They knew. None of this white supremacy movement made sense to anybody because nobody knew about this march and then it just happened. They kept it under wraps to prevent anybody from digging into the origins of it. Nobody ever heard of these people and then we never saw them again."

Then Gutfeld said the part the left really doesn't want on the record.

"It wasn't just a hoax or a fraud. It was a plot that resulted in people dying."

Biden Ran His Entire 2020 Campaign on Charlottesville and the SPLC Had an Operative There

Dana Perino played the clip. Joe Biden, standing at a podium, citing Charlottesville as the reason he decided to run in 2020. That moment – the very moment Democrats used to paint half the country as white supremacists – allegedly had an SPLC-paid operative at its center.

Biden rode Charlottesville all the way to the White House.

Gutfeld connected the rest of the dots.

"If a right wing group actually paid leftists like Antifa, BLM, Venezuelan drug gangs to terrorize citizens, to kind of underscore their value, it would be a huge story – but we never had to do that because all of that was real…. It's a testament to conservatives that you had to create the hate that wasn't there because we didn't supply it."

Jessica Tarlov sat across the table and tried to make the SPLC's alleged conduct sound routine.

https://twitter.com/lucalucchesi10/status/966562561771450368

"I don't see how we get from, we flipped people within these organizations and paid them for it, to white supremacy is made up…"

Gutfeld cut it off.

"That's B.S. Don't play that with us. No one believed it."

Tarlov then pivoted to the FBI – arguing the SPLC was simply doing what law enforcement does. Kennedy dismantled it immediately.

"The FBI uses criminal informants in order to prosecute criminals. The Southern Poverty Law Center was paying their enemies in order to raise money off of the existence of our enemies."

Jesse Watters showed his boot-licking colors.

"The FBI does not pay crime bosses. The FBI doesn't pay people to commit crimes – that blows the case up. It is called entrapment. It's illegal. This is a charity, it's not the FBI."

Where was he the last couple of years?

https://twitter.com/BlindFaithBook/status/2046983882298548555

Tarlov insisted she believed everything she was saying.

Gutfeld's response: "Do you actually believe what you are saying?"

Kash Patel Just Proved the Southern Poverty Law Center Was Farming Hate for Donor Dollars

The SPLC has pulled in hundreds of millions in donations over the decades – selling America on the lie that white supremacists were everywhere, dangerous, and multiplying. Charlottesville was their Super Bowl. It handed Democrats the single most powerful weapon in their 2020 arsenal and launched a fundraising explosion that justified censorship campaigns against conservative organizations nationwide.

At Tuesday's press conference, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stood alongside FBI Director Kash Patel and delivered the verdict. The SPLC was "manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred."

Gutfeld said what every conservative has known for years: the United States is the least racist country in the history of the world. The left couldn't accept it – so they built an industry around a crisis they were quietly engineering. The SPLC wasn't fighting hate. They were farming it.

The indictment doesn't just take down an organization. It takes down the entire narrative.

Sources:

• Steve Malzberg, "Gutfeld Calls 'BS' On Tarlov on Saying Right Thinks Racism's 'Made Up'," Newsbusters, April 23, 2026.
• "Federal Grand Jury Charges Southern Poverty Law Center for Wire Fraud, False Statements, and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering," Department of Justice, April 21, 2026.
• "Director Patel Announces Federal Charges Against SPLC," FBI, April 21, 2026.
• "SPLC Interim CEO Claims DOJ Is Investigating Organization Over Criminal Charges," Fox News, April 21, 2026.