Attorney General Pam Bondi has instructed federal law enforcement agencies to investigate 'antifa groups' for tax crimes, according to a memo reviewed by news outlets including the Guardian and Reuters. The AG tasks the agencies with increasing investigations into antifa (short for antifascist or antifascism) and other so-called "extremist groups," and compiling a list of entities possibly engaged in "domestic terrorism." She also instructs the agencies specifically to look into tax crimes the groups may have committed by defrauding the Internal Revenue Service. The move comes months after President Trump designated antifa, a decentralized movement with no leader, a terrorist organization.
Per journalist Ken Klippenstein, Bondi specifically wants the agencies to target groups that express "opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity"—and she's asking the FBI to push harder for Americans to call into its tipline with such info, and to develop a reward system for tips that lead to the leaders of these groups being identified and arrested. The agencies are instructed to go back five years in their probe. The news outlets note the move also appears to be aimed at stripping certain leftwing groups of their tax-exempt status.
"Bondi's memo could be the starting point for charges against a number of left-leaning advocacy groups and nonprofits the Trump administration has accused without evidence of having ties to extremists," writes Rebecca Beitsch at the Hill.
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