FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday that the bureau has dissolved its partnership with the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

“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,” Patel tweeted Friday.

Efforts to reach the SPLC, which was formed as a civil rights and legal advocacy group, were not immediately successful.

Patel’s statement referenced the SPLC’s Hate Map , an interactive visualization of the spread of extremist groups across the country.

The map has been criticized by conservatives who claim the SPLC’s designations unfairly label

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