The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under the leadership of Kash Patel and President Donald Trump, just severed ties with the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

The Hill reports that Patel announced the split this past week.

Take a look:

The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine. Their so-called “hate map” has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence. That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership.

In… pic.twitter.com/ZZ9yIkmzWj

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 3, 2025

"Officially terminated"

Patel, on Friday, took to social media to explain the decision to sever ties with the SPLC.

He wrote:

The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine. Their so-called “hate map” has been used to defame mainstream Americans and even inspired violence. That disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership.

In other words, this is another move taken by Patel to depoliticize the FBI.

The director continued:

In April, during our Anti-Christian Bias Panel, I made it clear that the FBI will never rely on politicized or agenda-driven intelligence from outside groups — and certainly not from the SPLC.

"Under this FBI, all ties with the SPLC have officially been terminated," Patel concluded.

Background

To further demonstrate the problem with the SPLC, the New York Post recently released a report detailing how the SPLC helped to train Biden-era Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors.

The outlet reports:

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center helped train Department of Justice prosecutors and was given exclusive access to federal hate crime databases to help draft talking points during President Joe Biden’s administration, The Post has learned. The partnership was one of several that the Biden DOJ’s Civil Rights Division cultivated with left-wing organizations to help shape its approach on issues such as “election security,” “racial profiling guidance,” “anti-LGBTQ violence,” and other hate crimes, according to internal emails, memos, schedules and records.

The information was obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The Post reports:

By 2022, members of the Civil Rights Division were directly soliciting SPLC for civil rights issues they should be “tracking” and inviting the group to attend quarterly departmental meetings . . . SPLC was later listed with the American Civil Liberties Union, Brennan Center for Justice, and Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights as attendees at a Nov. 14, 2022, meeting with high-ranking DOJ officials — including Clarke, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.

There is a lot more to the story. But, in short, it would appear that the SPLC had a major influence on the Biden administration.