SPLC whistleblower wrote article saying SPLC as "a highly profitable scam".
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/04/emerging-evidence-makes-hate-group-defamation-case-splc-stronger/
In 2019, the SPLC fired its co-founder, Morris Dees, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that barely made a blip in the legacy media. At the time, a former SPLC employee by the name of Robert Moser published an article, “The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center” in The New Yorker.
Moser wrote about the guilt he “couldn’t help feeling about the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie. We were part of the con, and we knew it.” He wrote that SPLC staffers would chat “about the oppressive security regime, the hyperbolic fund-raising appeals, and the fact that, though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, ‘hate’ always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year’s report on hate groups.”
“‘The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay,’ we’d say,” he wrote. “It was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam.”
Moser’s revealing article has become even more important since he published it in 2019. Moser himself wrote for the Intelligence Project, the SPLC division that produces the “hate group” list.
Unclear if King defamation suit against SPLC use whistleblower's testimony or just his articles. But either one a help.