MI SOS Jocelyn Benson Is Under the Microscope, This Time for Her Ties to Heidi Beirich and the SPLC

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By Jennifer Oliver O'Connell

Democrat Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is finally being put through the paces in her run for governor. Her slovenly work as secretary of state has recently come under a microscope. On Wednesday, state AG Dana Nessel criminally charged five non-citizens and one U.S. citizen for fraudulent voting in the 2024 election. On Tuesday, a lawsuit from the Michigan Republican Party against Benson was filed because Benson allegedly issued orders to delete election records in violation of state and federal retention laws.

But with the Wednesday arrest and indictment of The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Project's Heidi Beirich on wire fraud charges, Benson's ties to SPLC and Beirich are getting fresh scrutiny. As they should be. 

As our editor Bob Hoge reported Wednesday: 

Beirich previously ran the SPLC’s project tracking hate groups and allegedly funneled donor money to members of those organizations in exchange for inside information on their activities. In other words, she and the SPLC were funding hate while supposedly trying to combat it. Pretty sleazy stuff. 

The DOJ alleges that between 2007 and 2023, more than $4 million was handed out to individuals associated with various violent extremist groups.

When then-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the SPLC investigation back in April, Republicans brought Benson's ties to the organization into question.

Benson is a former volunteer and later board member of the SPLC, which was indicted Tuesday on 11 counts over accusations it fraudulently paid members of extremist groups like the KKK and those tied to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the SPLC paid members of these extremist groups so it could create a "work product that reported on these activities."

"Jocelyn Benson regularly touted her experience as a leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group that the Department of Justice says secretly funneled money to the KKK and other hate groups they were purportedly tracking," the Michigan Republican Party posted on its official X account on Friday.

"What did Jocelyn know, and when did she know it?"

Benson blasted the questions as a partisan witch hunt by Trump's DOJ:

But when pressed on what Benson knew about the allegations in the DOJ's indictment, her campaign pushed back on the Republican Party's attacks.

"Jocelyn Benson has spent her career advancing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement and expanding economic opportunity, including helping dismantle white supremacist and neo-Nazi extremist networks responsible for hate crimes across the country," the campaign told Fox News Digital on Friday.

"And while Donald Trump is trying to use his Justice Department to distract from his reckless economic policies that are driving up costs for Michiganders, Jocelyn remains focused on lower costs, raising wages, and protecting the rights and freedoms of the people in this state."

In a May Detroit News article, Benson further brushed off her SPLC board connection, saying it was "mostly ceremonial; it was mostly attending events and doing other things, like the 50th commemoration of the Voting Rights Act." 

Three months later, Benson cannot simply blow off what appear to be deeper ties to the SPLC and Beirich. Her time at the SPLC was featured prominently in her 2025 memoir, "The Purposeful Warrior." In January, Benson bragged to any journalist who would listen about her civil rights bona fides through her post-college volunteer work with the SPLC.

Right out of college, she worked as a volunteer researcher and undercover investigator at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the nonprofit legal and advocacy organization that researches white supremacists and far-right hate groups.

In 2010, as a professor at Wayne State University, Benson took her class on annual field trips to the SPLC offices in Atlanta. Once again, her connection appears much more than "ceremonial."

WATCH:

Beirich performed her fraudulent activities between 2015 and 2021. During that period, Benson served as an unpaid director on SPLC's board (2014 to 2018), when she also served as the dean of Wayne State University Law School.

As independent journalist James Dickson surmised:

One of two things is true about Jocelyn Benson’s time on the SPLC board: Either it was a ceremonial position that conducted no oversight. Or Benson helped oversee an organization for years as it allegedly paid the Ku Klux Klan and others to create the very chaos the SPLC rails against.

Between the Michigan Republican Party being hot on Benson's heels, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rep. John James (MI-10) dribbling out damaging oppo, it would behoove her to stop dismissing these obvious connections and get ahead of the narrative, before it gets ahead of her, as Dickson concluded:

Benson has the right to remain silent, but that would be the wrong move politically. The longer Benson waits to address the many questions about her SPLC ties, the louder those questions will get.

As the saying goes, it's not the crime, it's the cover up. What is Jocelyn Benson trying to cover up?

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