“Under this FBI, all ties with the SPLC have officially been terminated,” FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday in a statement denouncing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s unjust and dangerous demonization of conservative groups.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine,” Patel explained in his statement. The FBI director noted that the SPLC’s defamatory designation of conservative organizations as hateful because of their traditional values has “incited violence”:

“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 May, the SPLC added the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, founded by Charlie Kirk, to its “Hate Map.” Four months late, in September, Kirk was assassinated during a Turning Point event at a Utah college campus.

PragerU, which produces short videos explaining conservative principles, was also added to the “hate” list, as The Daily Signal reported at the time:

“The latest version of the SPLC hate map, released Thursday, lists Turning Point USA for the first time, categorizing the group as an ‘anti-government extremist group.’ The hate map also includes PragerU, a nonprofit that uses digital media to spread conservative ideas, putting it in the same category as Turning Point USA.”

In a separate article, The Signal recalls a notorious instance of SPLC’s “hate map” being used to violently target and attack a different conservative organization:

“In 2012, a domestic terrorist used the ‘hate map’ to target the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian think tank in Washington, D.C. He planned to kill everyone in the building. A building manager largely foiled the attack, but suffered lifelong injuries in the process. The SPLC condemned the attack, but kept the council on the ‘hate map’ ever since.”

“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,” FBI Director promised Friday in his statement.

In the video below, PragerU explains how the SPLC is “The ‘Anti-Hate’ Group That Is a Hate Group.”