Commentary Culture Investigations

Without loud and visible racists, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) would cease to exist. Is that why it allegedly subsidized them so heavily for so long?
A federal case brought by the Justice Department against the SPLC accuses the group of paying millions of dollars to prominent racists. The indictment notes that the group paid the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America, the leader of the National Socialist Party of America, and the president of the American Front.
The feds allege that the group set up bank accounts for fictitious entities to pay racists with funds difficult to trace back to the SPLC, such as on “loaded,” prepaid cards. Apart from this deception, the indictment highlights the group’s pledge to its donors to “dismantle” racist organizations at the same time it bankrolled those working for them with millions of dollars. It traces $3 million in donor funds put into the pockets of various haters over the course of a decade.
The specific charges in the 11-count indictment pertain to wire fraud, money laundering, and false statements to a federally insured bank. A Montgomery, Alabama, grand jury returned the indictment.
The most jarring paragraph of the 14-page document comes on the fourth page.
“F-37 was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC,” it reads. “F-37 made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid F-37 more than $270,000.00.”
Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old counterprotester, died in Charlottesville. The SPLC not only funded an organizer who transported protesters there, according to the Department of Justice, but it also oversaw his “racist postings.”
Setting up agents provocateur does not amount to anything new among left-wing groups.
Matthew Dallek revealed a “previously undisclosed counterintelligence operation waged by the ADL to infiltrate and dig up damaging information about the John Birch Society” in his book, Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. It resembles the SPLC program in terms of both tactics and in its duration, which extended from the late 1950s into at least the early 1970s. The methods used by the Anti-Defamation League included assets who joined white supremacist groups while posing as Birchers and who attempted to goad JBS leaders into issuing racist declarations.
“They obtained chapter membership lists, ran credit reports on individual Birchers, ferreted out their employment records, traced their financial transactions, wrote down their license plate numbers, obtained a codicil to a Bircher donor’s will, stumped them with tough questions during call-in radio shows, set up a Birch chapter meeting on false pretenses so an ADL target could be ‘interviewed,’ and studied their personal and professional associations,” Dallek wrote in his 2022 book. “Some of the scariest or most unflattering bits ended up in the press.”
Unlike hate groups infiltrated by the SPLC, the John Birch Society did not advocate racism or antisemitism but merely an outlook contrary to the leftism prevalent at the ADL. Dallek, however, reveals no financial windfall for Birchers from the ADL (perhaps the ADL windfall came in the tiny and unintentional validation of the organization’s conspiratorial tone). And that amounts to part of the outrage here, that the feds say the SPLC bankrolled — allegedly a million dollars in one case — all sorts of vile individuals.
The Justice Department has already won its case against the SPLC. Possibly, the SPLC successfully defends the wire fraud, false statements, and money laundering charges in a court of law. In the court of public opinion, the Southern Poverty Law Center just lost all of its credibility.
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The California-based winery owned by Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband has folded, according to business records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The move came nearly one year after the Minnesota Democrat filed a financial disclosure that listed the winery’s value at up to $5 million—and roughly a week after Omar amended the disclosure to state that the winery had no value at all.
The winery, eStCru, filed for termination with the California secretary of state’s office on April 4, records show. The form was signed by Omar’s husband Tim Mynett’s business partner, former DNC adviser Will Hailer.
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It’s a major fall from grace for the winery—at least on paper. Nearly one year ago, in May 2025, Omar filed an annual financial disclosure that said the winery was worth between $1 million and $5 million at the end of 2024. (Lawmakers report their assets in ranges rather than exact figures.) That marked an increase of at least 1,900 percent and as much as 32,233 percent from the previous year, when Omar said the winery was worth between $15,000 and $50,000.
When the Free Beacon reported on Omar’s exploding net worth—Omar had said it was “ridiculous” and “categorically false” to claim she was worth millions of dollars—the left-wing “Squad” member called the report false. Omar argued that, although the winery and one other asset, her husband’s “Venture Capital Management” firm, were indeed worth millions of dollars, they generated no more than $15,000 in income, which is not how wealth is calculated.
“Learn to read before you post misleading shit,” Omar said.
It was Omar who went on to issue a correction. In a revised financial statement filed on March 26—nine days before eStCru filed for termination—Omar disclosed that the winery and venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, had no value at all, though she also said they generated up to $5,000 and $1,000,000 in respective income in 2024. She blamed the massive discrepancy on an “accounting error.”
“The amended disclosure confirms what we’ve said all along: The congresswoman is not a millionaire,” Omar spokeswoman Jacklyn Rogers told the Wall Street Journal. “Aides said that Omar looked at the form before it was filed in 2025, but that the error didn’t jump off the page for her because she isn’t involved with her husband’s businesses and she trusted the accuracy of the accountant who provided her husband’s figures,” the outlet reported.
Omar and Mynett, the congresswoman’s third husband, are no stranger to scandal. They denied having an affair in September 2019, when they were both married to other people and when Mynett served as a consultant for Omar’s campaign. By March 2020, Omar and Mynett had divorced their respective spouses and announced they had wed. Mynett’s firm received $3 million from Omar’s campaign from 2018 through 2020.
Mynett then made what has proved to be a rocky transition from political operative to entrepreneur and investor. He founded Rose Lake Capital in 2022 with his business partner, Hailer. The firm claimed on its website that its management team oversaw $60 billion in assets, though it is not registered with the Security and Exchange Commission, and some of its prior advisers, including former senator Max Baucus (D., Mont.), publicly distanced themselves from the firm.
“You can read between the lines,” Baucus told the New York Post in January—”it sounded a little bit fishy.”
Mynett’s wine venture also struggled before its collapse. EStCru—which sold wines with names like “Blockchain” and “Clothesline”—had just $650 in its bank account in February 2024, when it faced a lawsuit from a Washington, D.C., businessman, Naeem Mohd, who sought $780,000 in damages. Mohd’s attorney told the Free Beacon the suit was resolved with the winery paying a cash settlement in November 2024.
Omar’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Fall From Grapes: Winery Owned by Ilhan Omar’s Husband Folds One Year After Omar Said It Was Worth Up to $5 Million appeared first on .

A shepherd slain.
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When Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Hakeem Jefferies, and Kamala Harris come together to express their elation, then we can rest assured that something very bad for the country has happened. I speak of yesterday’s redistricting vote in Virginia, a blatant and arguably unconstitutional attempt to gerrymander Virginia’s congressional representation, converting a 6–5 split between Democrats and Republicans, built upon a bipartisan redistricting process approved in 2020, into a 10–1 Democrat advantage.
I’ve already written about this measure, shortly after early voting started and again in the closing days of the election. I have nothing to add to my earlier analysis of how profoundly wrong it was for Virginia, and profoundly wrong-headed its appeal to a certain class of Virginia voters, those who want to run the state from the suburbs of D.C. 
Nor do I wish to dive into the legal path ahead, except to note that a constitutional challenge is already underway, and that before actual redistricting can take place, the measure will have its day in court. As for the fairness of the vote itself, perhaps one observation will suffice, namely that the Democrats outspent the Republicans by approximately four to one, much of it, apparently, being money coming from outside Virginia. 
Add this to the massive free support from much of the media and hugely influential D.C. suburban TV stations, and one doesn’t even have to reach for other ways in which the vote might have been manipulated. The deck was always stacked and, as conservatives across the state belatedly woke up to the threat — rallying in town after town, fighting hard to drum up every small town and rural vote — the Democrats piled on even more aggressively.
Proponents dishonestly pitched the election as being about fairness, even including that wording in the ballot measure itself. This was always a deception. The “fairness” in question was always about countering the actions in other states, notably Texas, without reference to the fact that those actions were themselves a response to how the Democrats have for years stacked the decks in places like California, Illinois, New York, and the Northeast. 
A simple glance at the by-county results of yesterday’s vote tells a different story of fairness, fairness for all parts of Virginia. Virginia has 95 counties and 38 independent cities, a total of 133 counties or county equivalents. Only a handful of these jurisdictions voted in favor of the measure, the elephants in the Virginia political room, most notably Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Loudoun County. If one looks at the electoral map as a whole, most of Virginia voted “no.”
The Democrats insist that it’s only the numbers that count, and that the high population areas deserve the weight they seem determined to throw around. Here again, yesterday’s results tell a different story. “Yes” garnered 51.5 percent of the vote, while “no” earned 48.5. If you translate this balance into congressional representation, it comes a lot closer to the current 6–5 split than it does to the 10–1 advantage the Democrats now hope to impose.
Ironically, if yesterday’s result in Virginia stands, the likely outcome will be a nationwide redistricting war, and one that could well end to the Democrats’ disadvantage. The Democrats, by and large, have already squeezed every conceivable electoral advantage out of the blue states, but the red states have a lot of juice left in their redistricting apples. If it comes to that, the Democrats will only have themselves to blame, near-term gain for long-term pain. There’s only so much satisfaction, long-term, to be found in the political equivalent of an adolescent temper tantrum.
I hate the very thought of such a battle, one that takes the viciousness that has captured so much of our public discourse and embeds it in the fundamental structures of our political life. That said, for conservatives to unilaterally disarm by “taking the high road” almost guarantees what I’ve already decried: not simply the “Californication” of Virginia, but the same for the entire country.
But the battle, if battle there must be, has to be joined on two levels. The political, to be sure, which means that Republicans need to get their act together and start fighting like the future of the country depends on it — which it undoubtedly does. Pass the SAVE Act, fight back against the National Popular Vote madness, stop squabbling, and start turning executive orders into laws that can’t be easily overturned if — horror upon horror — we find ourselves in the future with a Newsom/Spanberger administration in Washington. If that vision doesn’t promote a sober reassessment, then nothing will.
The second level, however, is even more important. Perhaps the most famous one-line observation about building a successful business is “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I saw this across a lifetime working first in academia, then in business, and finally in the government. The evidence is there for all to see, from our popular entertainment to our political values. The rot is everywhere, even in our churches, where mindless liberal pieties now compete with eternal truths. 
We change this by what we choose to support, what we decide to engage with in our everyday lives, the movies we choose, the books we read, the school boards we elect, the churches we attend. We shape it in the workplace, and in our social interactions. Even in defeat, yesterday’s “no” vote revealed a passion within our communities that refused to be quelled by the drumbeat of Obama’s “We’re counting on you, Virginia” ads plastered all over our television screens.
Finally, we can’t simply give up on the Democrat strongholds. This morning, in the aftermath of disappointment, a friend wrote to me that she was sick to her stomach at the result, and that “my neighbors in Fairfax County are reckless sheep who think they are enlightened.” But even in overwhelmingly blue Fairfax County, the heartland of those government employees embittered by DOGE and shaped by decades of Washington Post liberalism, roughly a third of the voters cast “no” votes. Therein lies something to build upon.
This day after, then, cannot be a time to turn inward in our disappointment. Instead, it’s time to gird ourselves once more for the long battle ahead.
James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a nuclear security and counter-terrorism professional. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His most recent novel, The Zebras from Minsk, was featured among National Review’s favorite books in 2025. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and its predecessor, Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

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