WASHINGTON — Heidi Beirich, the onetime leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s informant program, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal charges alleging she deceived donors by overseeing secret payments to informants inside neo-Nazi and other far-right extremist groups.

Beirich waived her appearance in court Tuesday. Her attorney Michael Proctor entered the not guilty plea on her behalf.

In a statement to HuffPost, Proctor said the case against Beirich was “without merit.”

“We believe the charges against her and the SPLC are politically motivated, and Dr. Beirich has been targeted in this case because of the important work she has done to combat hate groups and extremists. Violent extremists have not stopped or intimidated Dr. Beirich from her vital work during her time at the SPLC or in the six and a half years after she left the SPLC,” Proctor said. “Dr. Beirich won’t be silenced or intimidated by the government’s false and politicized allegations now. She welcomes the opportunity to present the truth in court.”

Beirich was added Aug. 12 to an existing criminal indictment against SPLC itself.

The group’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, ripped into federal prosecutors following her arrest, calling the allegations of wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false bank statements and conspiracy to commit money laundering “desperate,” “weak” and proof that prosecutors were “scrambling to make something — anything — stick” in the larger criminal case against the full organization.

The criminal trial is scheduled to begin in October.

The Justice Department first indicted SPLC, a civil rights nonprofit organization that works to counter extremism, in April on 11 counts including wire fraud, money laundering and bank fraud. At its core, the DOJ accuses SPLC of engaging in a yearslong conspiracy by telling its donors that money was being used to combat violent domestic extremism but instead using that money to support it.

Prosecutors say that from 2007 to 2023, SPLC covertly funneled over $4 million to informants or other confidential sources inside extremist and white nationalist groups, including the KKK, Aryan Nations and the National Alliance. This support included the SPLC using donor money to buy klan robes, pay for cross-burning ceremonies and pay for informants’ living expenses without donors knowing, prosecutors allege.

Covering various expenses for informants so they can infiltrate a group is fairly standard since it allows a person to participate in events, speak to members of a monitored group or operate covertly. Law enforcement, including the DOJ and FBI, regularly relies on informants to uncover potential crimes and is allowed to pay them for services and supply resources needed to do the job. The Justice Department itself adheres to guidelines for such work, including payments.

While serving as the head of SPLC’s Intelligence Project, prosecutors allege, Beirich developed a romantic relationship with an informant who infiltrated the National Alliance, one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in America. Over six years, Beirich allegedly shared a bank account with the informant where nearly $140,000 in funds were received. (Beirich also co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a group that monitors transnational hate movements, in 2020.)

SPLC pleaded not guilty to all of the charges in July and tried to have the case dismissed as vindictive prosecution, but U.S. District Judge Emily Marks, a Trump appointee, denied the request. (Marks found SPLC failed to show evidence that it was being prosecuted for exercising its First Amendment rights, as the organization claimed.)

SPLC argues all of its work has been done legally and that its informant and extremist tracking programs have served as a boon to law enforcement agencies, including the DOJ and FBI.

In briefs filed this summer, attorneys for SPLC revealed that at a meeting with prosecutors literally days before its indictment, SPLC produced 15,000 documents to the government outlining how SPLC provided information captured through its informant program.

According to court records, that included a tip about a member of the white nationalist group Vanguard America who was trying to gain security clearance for work at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, as well as a substantial report SPLC shared with law enforcement in 2017 ahead of the far-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Insights about who was going to attend, their associations or criminal backgrounds and other specific details about the event were a direct product of the informant program, SPLC attorneys said.

SPLC says the indictment is a politically motivated attack by the Trump administration and its allies over the nonprofit’s decades of success in exposing right-wing extremism.

In the 1980s, SPLC helped bankrupt the KKK through civil litigation. In more recent years, it has done extensive work tracking and monitoring hate groups, including Trump-supporting groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, which were involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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