MI-GOV: Jocelyn Benson on her time with Southern Poverty Law Center [View all]

Mackinac Island — Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said her position on the Southern Poverty Law Center board was "mostly ceremonial" and she maintained she was not aware of what a federal indictment alleges was a decade-long use of paid informants to infiltrate hate groups.

Benson served as an unpaid director on SPLC's board, from 2014 to 2018, according to the group's tax records. She noted in an interview Wednesday that she was serving as dean of the Wayne State University law school at the time.

"My role was mostly ceremonial; it was mostly attending events and doing other things, like the 50th commemoration of the Voting Rights Act," Benson told The Detroit News at the Mackinac Policy Conference.

The 11-count indictment from an Alabama federal grand jury alleged that the SPLC, as an organization, committed wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in its efforts to plant field sources, known as Fs, inside white supremacist groups like Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation neo-Nazi organization and the National Alliance. The DOJ alleges the SPLC used the informants to foment hatred inside the groups that the SPLC was publicly denouncing on its website.




https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2026/05/31/jocelyn-benson-southern-poverty-law-center-board-kkk-neo-nazi-paid-informants/90303746007/