The group also maintains ties overseas; in 1998, according to the white supremacist site American Renaissance, a delegation from the group “had the pleasure of presenting Jean-Marie Le Pen with a Confederate flag that had flown over the South Carolina state capitol.” Le Pen founded France’s far-right National Front, but was recently suspended from the party by its current leader—his daughter—for remarks casting doubt on the Holocaust.

The CCC also prominently protested in 2000 when South Carolina lawmakers moved the Confederate battle flag from atop the statehouse—where it had flown since 1961—to a site elsewhere on the capitol grounds in Columbia.

Since the shooting, and since the manifesto attributed to Roof was revealed, the CCC has moved to distance itself from him. A post on the group’s website condemns the massacre but takes great pains to look for other explanations than racism: Roof’s “interest in racial politics started only very recently,” it says, suggesting that drugs could have been a factor and noting that some of Roof’s apparent Facebook friends are black. It also implies that his friends are to blame for not stopping him. In a separate post, the CCC again condemns Roof but insists that the danger of black-on-white crime is real. The statement directs inquiries to Jared Taylor, who also runs American Renaissance.

Despite its open espousal of white supremacy—or, a cynic might say, because of it—the group continues to attract high-profile politicians. Then-Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, a Republican (and later a Libertarian presidential candidate), delivered a keynote address to the group in 1998. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, who was forced to resign the Senator Majority Leadership after praising Senator Strom Thurmond’s segregationist “Dixiecrat” presidential bid of 1948 at a 100th birthday party for Thurmond, was also linked to the group. “Sen. Trent Lott once addressed this group's national board, welcomed its leaders to Washington, had photos taken with them in his office and then said he didn't know what they were about,” The Washington Post reported. “The CCC's directors wink and nod at that. One of them was a county chairman of Lott's '94 reelection campaign. One of them is his uncle.” Mike Huckabee also delivered a speech to the CCC, via video, in the early 1990s, but later condemned the group.

Why do politicians keep speaking to the CCC? The outwardly neutral name might have something to do with it. Every time a politician is caught, he—like Lott—insists he didn’t know what the group’s stances were. When it was revealed that Representative Steve Scalise had spoken to a different racist group earlier in his career, he too said he didn’t know about its position—and at least one black Democratic colleague vouched for him.

The fact is that politicians are eager to raise money and often don’t carefully vet groups before speaking to them. And CCC members have spread their money around. As The Guardian first reported over the weekend, CCC President Earl Holt III has donated some $65,000 to candidates in recent years, including GOP presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum. (Holt took over the group after Baum’s death in spring 2015.) Holt’s contribution records read as a who’s who of conservative candidates in recent years—including Mark Sanford, who represents Charleston in the House. Holt has given to black candidates, including Representative Mia Love of Utah and former Representative Allen West of Florida. Bizarrely, in some of his donations, Holt identifies himself as a self-employed “slumlord”; others call him a real-estate developer or landlord. Commenter accounts around the web using his full name are repositories of racism and slurs.