Agents are looking at whether funding was sent through U.S.-based nonprofit groups and whether any of those nonprofits had tax-exempt status.
FBI Director Kash Patel said on Feb. 18 that the law enforcement agency uncovered what he said are funding sources tied to antifa organizations, suggesting that more enforcement actions could come against the left-wing movement.
“Whether it’s antifa or any other violent criminal organization—we know their operations don’t exist alone; they operate with heavy funding streams,” he wrote in a post on X, along with a clip from an interview with former deputy director Dan Bongino, on his show.
Patel said that the FBI is “finding them and those who fund their criminal activity.”
The FBI chief did not provide more information about the organizations, the source of the funding, or specific donors who may be involved. However, he said the FBI is looking into any financial backers linked to violence committed by alleged antifa operators.
Agents are looking at whether funding was sent through U.S.-based nonprofit groups and whether any of those nonprofits had tax-exempt status. They are also evaluating potential foreign funding streams, he said.
“Money doesn’t lie,” Patel told Bongino in the interview, saying that the FBI is right now “following the money” and that the law enforcement agency is “starting to arrest people who used their funds to incite violence in the guise of political peaceful protest.”
Last year, Patel told The Epoch Times’s Jan Jekielek in an interview that the FBI is mapping out the entire antifa network and indicated that funding streams are being traced, coming months after the Trump administration designated antifa as a domestic terrorist group.
The executive order, issued by President Donald Trump on Sept. 22, called antifa a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.” The administration also designated foreign antifa groups as foreign terrorist organizations in November 2025.
The State Department, in its designation, stated that “groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas.”
