Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Thursday that the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI have made substantial progress on investigating the networks funding Antifa leftist agitators, and he mentioned one concrete policy change that could undermine nonprofits’ ability to prop up the violent movement.
“In October, the Treasury Department started working with the FBI to investigate who’s funding Antifa,” The Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese asked Bessent. “Can you give us an update on that investigation?”
“We’ve made substantial progress, and I think in the weeks and months ahead, we’re going to have a lot to report,” Bessent responded.
He noted one concrete change the IRS has already made, which may help expose and combat Antifa funding.
“The IRS is now giving guidance on the Form 990, which nonprofits have to file,” the Treasury secretary explained. He said the IRS will “demand that nonprofits know their grant recipients.”
“So, if a grant recipient is violent, if they are suppressing people’s rights, then you are responsible for that,” Bessent explained. “I think that’s a very good first step.”
The Trump Administration Targets Antifa
Following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in September, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing an “all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism” and Antifa.
National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 warns that left-wing violence “is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” The document calls for “a new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies—including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them.”
Trump mentioned the Black Lives Matter riots of summer 2020, which resulted in more than $2 billion in insurance payouts, according to insurance analysts. The violence cost the lives of at least 26 Americans.
Street violence has become more intermittent, but hasn’t abated. Leftist protests have escalated into violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, attacks on Teslas and Tesla dealerships, and even the takeover of a church service in St. Paul, Minn., in January. Some organizations that helped organize the protests—but which almost always condemn the violence—have received grants from the Left’s dark money network.
Prosecuting Antifa
While Trump’s critics have noted that Antifa is a loosely-organized movement that often relies on mutual aid funding, rather than nonprofit grants, the administration has had some success in convicting Antifa agitators for violent crimes.
In March, a Texas jury convicted eight members of what prosecutors described as an Antifa cell for providing material support to terrorists. The prosecutor in the case described the convictions as a “road map” to implement Trump’s strategy.
The jury convicted eight people of riot, providing material support to terrorists, and other charges related to a July 4, 2025, riot outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas. Rioters set off fireworks, and when police arrived at the scene, one of the rioters opened fire, wounding an officer in the shoulder.
“Antifa was found to be a domestic terrorist organization and that these defendants were found to provide material support, I think, is very consistent with NSPM-7 and the priority of this administration to try to stop political violence by domestic terrorist groups,” Ryan Raybould, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, told the Daily Signal in March.
“This case shows a road map for charging individuals that commit violent acts that are coordinating through their Antifa affiliation,” he added.
Requiring nonprofits to know and monitor grant recipients may help prosecutors hold nonprofits accountable if they knowingly fund agitators who engage in violence. Such a requirement may also deter nonprofits from directing money to agitators in the first place.
