Southern Poverty Law Center lawyer charged with domestic terrorism in ‘Cop City’ attack

The Southern Poverty Law Center may want to look a little closer to home in its quest to expose violent extremism.

Thomas Webb Jurgens, who lists himself online as an SPLC staff attorney, was one of 23 people charged with domestic terrorism in connection with Sunday’s fiery attack on the construction site for a police training center, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

He began working for the SPLC’s Economic Justice Project in September 2021 after serving as an assistant public defender in Florida and as a legal intern for the DeKalb County public defender’s office in Georgia, according to his LinkedIn profile, which was deleted Monday.

The State Bar of Georgia also lists Mr. Jurgens’ employer as the SPLC.

The irony did not go unnoticed by critics of the SPLC, known for tracking “domestic hate groups and other extremists” and including in its “hate map” such mainstream conservative organizations as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council.

“Will the SPLC be listing itself as a hate group?” asked Rep. Dan Bishop, North Carolina Republican, on Twitter.

Popular right-tilting podcaster Tim Pool tweeted: “The SPLC employs terrorists??” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton asked: “So is SPLC officially a domestic terrorist group?”

Hundreds of mask-wearing protesters descended on the site of the $90 million training center approved by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, setting fires and destroying multiple pieces of construction equipment at what left-wing opponents have called “Cop City.”

“On March 5, 2023, a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest at the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers,” said the Atlanta Police Department in a Monday statement.

“They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers,” the department said.

Of the 23 suspects arrested, only two were from Georgia, including Mr. Jurgens.

One of the suspects was from France and another was from Canada. The rest were from states as far away as Arizona, Massachusetts, New York and Utah.

“This was a very violent attack that occurred this evening. Very violent attack,” said Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum at a late Sunday news conference. “This wasn’t about a public safety training center, this was about anarchy, and this was about the attempt to destabilize.”

Despite its unabashed left-wing tilt, the SPLC was used as a source for a Jan. 23 intelligence bulletin by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Richmond field office on the threat from “radical-traditionalist Catholics.”

The bureau rescinded the report last month after being accused of anti-Catholic bias.

The Sunday rioting was linked by Antifa-watchers to the shadowy anarchist protest group known for its anti-police credo and politically motivated attacks on government buildings and businesses.

The SPLC does not list Antifa on its “hate map” of 733 U.S. organizations, and in fact has defended the anarchist collective.

After President Donald Trump threatened to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization amid the Black Lives Matter rioting in 2020, the SPLC accused him of seeking to criminalize “mourners and protesters demonstrating against abuses of police power.”

“Individuals loosely affiliated with antifa are typically involved in skirmishes and property crimes at demonstrations across the country, but the threat of lethal violence pales in comparison to that posed by far-right extremists — a problem that, until the last year, federal authorities virtually ignored,” said the SPLC in a post dated June 2, 2020.

The mug shot posted by the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office appears to show the same person as in the shot posted on Mr. Jurgens’ LinkedIn account, although he looks considerably scruffier in the arrest photo.

Will the SPLC be listing itself as a hate group? https://t.co/jdKzGXZMaX

— Rep. Dan Bishop (@RepDanBishop) March 6, 2023

The SPLC did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Mr. Jurgens’ arrest, but others swung back Monday at the criticism by invoking the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

“The right is attacking the entire SPLC, which has done amazing work tracking the #1 domestic terror threat in America (white supremacist terror), just because one employee was arrested for attacking the police? Well by that logic let me tell you about the Jan. 6 insurrection,” tweeted author Wajahat Ali.

More arrests may be coming.

Police said 35 suspects have been detained, adding that the “illegal actions of agitators could have resulted in bodily harm.”

“Officers exercised restraint and used non-lethal enforcement to conduct arrests,” the Atlanta police said.

Activists first moved into the site in June 2021 and have been involved in a number of violent incidents since then, including throwing Molotov cocktails at police in May 2022 and trying to set a lost driver’s car on fire last November.

Tensions surrounding the facility heightened in January after police shot and killed a protester, 26-year-old Manuel Estaban Paez Teran, after he shot and injured a state trooper as authorities sought to clear a protest tent encampment at the site, the GBI said.

The SPLC Union said in a statement that the man’s death represented “yet another extra-judicial killing by the police,” as shown on a tweet posted by Antifa Watch.

Those raising money to help bail out the protesters including the Atlanta Solidarity Fund.

“It’s sadly no surprise that police would arbitrarily attack and arrest Cop City festival-goers at random tonight,” the fund tweeted. “They have a history of using unconstitutional force and collective punishment against opponents of their proposed training facility.”