The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are actively investigating Antifa individuals and organizations that the Trump administration has designated as domestic terrorists. Activities so far include gathering intelligence on Antifa affinity groups, interviewing the FBI's vast network of informants for information about Antifa, and examining financial records, two sources involved in the investigation told me.
While major media outlets continue to downplay the crackdown and virtually ignore the President's primary executive order and related national security directive. NSPM-7 The investigations will likely rival in scope the Biden administration's Jan. 6 investigations into the perpetrators, the sources said.
“There will undoubtedly be lawsuits that will follow, as well as stomachaches over Team Trump's failure to follow established procedures, but no one should question the orders that have come from above to destroy Antifa,” a senior career Homeland Security official told me.
At a White House roundtable on the Antifa threat last week, President Trump and other administration officials compared the loose, “anti-fascist” anarchist collective to an international terrorist group or organized crime syndicate.
“Antifa is as complex as MS-13, as is TDA [Tren de Aragua]like ISIS, like Hezbollah, like Hamas, like all of them,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at the event.
“Fighting crime is about more than just getting the bad guys off the streets,” added Attorney General Pam Bondi. “It breaks down an organization brick by brick, just like we did with the cartels.”
“What we do at the FBI is simple,” said FBI Director Cash Patel. “We follow the money. Money never lies. And that's what it takes to bring down this network of organized crime thugs, gangsters and, yes, domestic terrorists, because that's what they are.”
At one point, President Trump tasked several prominent conservative media figures in attendance (all of whom said they had been targeted by Antifa for reporting on them) to share their knowledge with senior national security officials.
“Do you know the name of any of the sponsors?” – Trump asked the round table participants. “Because if you do, I’d like you to give them to Kash or Pam or Christy—as soon as possible.”
The failure to find organized Antifa marks a nearly 180-degree turn from previous government announcements about the group. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that while Antifa is “a real thing… it is not a group or an organization.” Instead, Wray compared Antifa to a “movement or ideology.”
Not believing that Antifa does not have a common organizational structure, the Trump administration is now setting out to find one. A list of “like-minded groups” that adhere to Antifa “ideology” is being circulated, according to a national security source. These include Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon; Refuse fascism; Anti-Racist Action (ARA); Hillbilly Riot; and the John Brown Shooting Club. The official claims that this list was compiled as a result of nothing more than Internet searches and right-wing influence channels.
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck reported this week that three FBI agents visited his home last Saturday to get information about Antifa based on research he and his team did for articles.
“To say the FBI was interested in this would be an understatement,” Beck said on his show. “Let's just say the FBI is turning over every stone. It's so clear to me that they are looking into every aspect of this and talking to anyone and everyone who can give them any information.”
The FBI declined to comment on Beck's account or the FBI's interview with its informants, citing the government shutdown. “During the current appropriations hiatus, FBI operations are focused on national security, violations of federal law, and critical public safety functions,” the FBI National Press Office responded in an email. “Media requests outside the scope of these functions will be considered when the appropriation cessation ends.”
NSPM-7, Trump's directive directing federal law enforcement to root out domestic terrorists like Antifa, also directed the Treasury Department to study nonprofit groups that might fund them. The directive has resulted in prominent law firms advising their nonprofit clients to avoid violating the order, as I did previously reported.
“I also want to thank our Treasury Secretary for his work in getting to the bottom of these funding mechanisms and the people who perpetuate this violence in our American cities,” Noem said at the roundtable.
A Home Office official says two sponsors are under scrutiny: Tides Foundation; and Neville “Roy” Singham, an American multimillionaire known to support left-wing causes. Again, the official says, the organizations were chosen because right-wing media wrote about them.
Despite Trump calling Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization”, NCSP-7 and most recently the White House Antifa Roundtable, the mainstream media remains unimpressed. Mary McCord, acting assistant attorney general for national security during the Obama administration, downplayed any significance of Trump's directives in comments on an MSNBC panel this week.
“Nothing in NSSP 7 actually enforces, creates any new crime, creates any new oversight, powers, creates any new investigative agencies. So… the government must still, at least by law, comply with existing law, right? So, if it's going to search someone's emails, it needs a warrant based on probable cause. It will find evidence of a crime, signed by a judge, right? If it's going to file charges, it has to go before a grand jury and prove it. Confirmed as probable cause. So it's not like he has a license to suddenly charge organizations with crimes or strip them of their tax-exempt status.”
That same day, Pam Bondi went on Fox News and said the exact opposite.
“We're going to get to the funding of Antifa, we're going to get to the roots of Antifa, and we're going to find and charge all of these people,” Bondi said. “They are no different from MS-13 or any other gang.”
We're going to “eradicate Antifa from existence,” says Kristi Noem.
That is, if they can find it.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
