(The Lion) — When now-convicted terrorist Floyd Corkins stormed a Christian conservative organization with a 9mm pistol, 50 rounds of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches he planned to shove in the faces of his victims, Chris Gacek was in the building.
Unaware of the scene unfolding in the lobby, Gacek worked from the Family Research Council’s (FRC) floor on Aug. 15, 2012, in Washington, D.C. The building manager, Leo Johnson, disarmed Corkins and forced him to the ground before he could carry out the massacre he later told the FBI he planned.
Corkins told federal investigators he discovered the FRC through the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which “lists anti-gay groups.”
The SPLC requested May 26 that a federal judge dismiss the criminal charges filed against it by the Department of Justice (DOJ), arguing the Trump administration is operating a “top-down, retributive campaign.”
The SPLC did not respond to The Lion’s multiple requests for comment.
The SPLC was initially founded in 1971 and helped provide legal aid to advance the civil rights movement, targeting and monitoring extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The organization later began to plaster conservative and Christian organizations such as FRC on its nationwide “hate map.” FRC was added to the map in November 2010 – where it still remains today – with the SPLC describing it as the “hard core of the anti-gay movement.”
FRC has maintained it does not hate homosexuals but affirms the traditional view of marriage found in the Bible, and the groups disagree over the validity of FRC’s research claims identifying homosexuality as a potential risk factor for child sex abuse.
Gacek, still an FRC senior fellow for regulatory affairs, told The Lion he believes the SPLC’s labeling tactics are “extremely sinister.”
“There’s a sort of targeting, ostracism – ‘othering’ people, doxing them. And if that doesn’t work, there’s a stochastic process where you just put it out into the water: call everybody a hater, hater, hater, and then maybe somebody tries to kill them,” Gacek said. “And this is what happened here at FRC in 2012.”
Johnson was shot in the left arm before he could disarm the attacker, and Gacek recalled “he had a long recovery. … Embolisms showed up in his lungs months later, and that was life-threatening too.” Johnson required emergency surgery and was unable to work for months, according to a DOJ statement.
Despite the attack, Gacek recalled FRC staffers were determined to return to work the next day, “even though their spouses were scared.”
After the 2012 shooting, the SPLC said though the shooting was a “tragedy,” it called FRC president Tony Perkins’ account “outrageous.” Perkins attributed fault to the shooter but added Corkins had been given a “license to shoot an unarmed man” by organizations such as the SPLC, whose labeling he called “reckless.”
Gacek told The Lion he believes the SPLC’s tactics have mirrored “stochastic terrorism,” defined by leading scholars as the use of media to inspire random acts of ideologically motivated violence.
Now, facing federal charges, the SPLC describes itself as the victim of a “retribution campaign.” The original indictment was over 11 counts of “wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering,” according to the DOJ.
Notably, the DOJ filed a superseding indictment on Tuesday with more allegations on how the SPLC’s donations were used to pay “leaders and organizers of racist groups.”
In its legal filing, the SPLC argued the charges amount to government retaliation for constitutionally protected speech.
“To carry out the President’s directive, others in the Administration targeted the SPLC, which now faces criminal charges for exercising its First Amendment right to identify, report on, and criticize extremist hate groups,” the SPLC wrote.
Following a joint FBI and Internal Revenue Service investigation, the DOJ alleged the SPLC “secretly funneled” over $3 million in donor funds to individuals associated with extremist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party and Unite the Right. The SPLC contends that the payments went to informants who could monitor violent threats from the groups and the information was frequently shared with the FBI, according to multiple reports.
“In order to covertly pay its field sources, the SPLC opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities,” the superseding indictment states. “The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the field sources. In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.”
The superseding indictment further alleges the SPLC had a source within an “online leadership chat group” that planned the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“That field source made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees,” the indictment states. An SPLC employee directed this source to “attend this event in which one woman and two law enforcement officers were tragically killed,” the indictment continues.
SPLC argued in its motion to dismiss that the Trump administration has falsely claimed that it is “anti-Christian,” aided the Biden administration in “weaponizing” the DOJ, helped “rig” the 2020 election and that Trump “directed his Justice Department to go after those individuals and groups he deemed his political enemies, including the SPLC.”
Tyler O’Neil, senior investigative reporter at The Daily Signal and author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Lion that the SPLC placed Focus on the Family on the hate map and suggested that the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a hateful document.
“I am not aware of the Trump administration ever referring to the SPLC as ‘anti-Christian,’ but it is ironic to see this leftist group screaming to high heaven when critics such as myself accurately describe it that way,” O’Neil said.
O’Neil said that the administration was correct that the SPLC influenced the Biden DOJ, noting the FBI cited the group in its “notorious anti-Catholic memo.”
“The administration’s willingness to state these facts does not prove that the SPLC did not commit wire fraud or bank fraud, and it also does not prove that the administration is prosecuting the SPLC vindictively,” O’Neil continued. “It is extremely rare that judges grant motions to dismiss for vindictive prosecution, especially before trial. Yet the SPLC’s motion has achieved what was likely its intended effect – propping up the Left’s framing that the SPLC is some poor victim here.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement when the charges against the SPLC were announced on April 21 that “no entity is above the law. … This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable.”
The SPLC also noted in the filing that Trump linked conservative Christian commentator Charlie Kirk’s murder to a broader pattern of “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech.”
The SPLC included Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, on a list of “extremist groups” that “use political, communication, violent, and online tactics to build strategies and training infrastructure to divide the country, demoralize people, and dismantle democracy” in its 2024 summary on “hate and extremism.”
Released in May 2025 – four months before Kirk was shot and killed – the profile labeled Kirk a “figure to know” and argued his organization was “orchestrating myths of religious persecution.”
