FOLLOW THE MONEY: Why Trump Admin Is Right to Track Funding for Political Violence

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FOLLOW THE MONEY: Why Trump Admin Is Right to Track Funding for Political Violence

President Donald Trump in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025. (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

Tyler O'Neil / @Tyler2ONeil

Tyler O'Neil is senior editor at The Daily Signal and the author of two books: "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center," and "The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government."

For years, the Left tried to gaslight Americans into thinking that Antifa was a fake threat, even though we could see the political violence before our own eyes. Now, the Trump administration isn’t just bringing charges against Antifa rioters, it’s taking aim at the potential funding networks behind the violence.

When Antifa agitators set cars on fire, threw Molotov cocktails and fireworks at the federal courthouse in Portland, and terrorized the streets of U.S. cities in the summer of 2020, many on the Left brushed aside the violence as “fiery but peaceful protests.”

Insurance analysts have estimated that the Black Lives Matter riots between May 28 and June 8, 2020 resulted in more than $2 billion in insurance payouts. The violence cost the lives of at least 26 Americans, including heroes like retired police Captain David Dorn.

The street violence has become more intermittent, but it hasn’t fully abated. Agitators have set Teslas on fire to protest Elon Musk’s work in the Trump administration. Anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses have veered into antisemitic harassment. In some cases, groups that organized protests received grants from the Left’s dark money network.

Some radical leftists have even attempted or carried out assassinations. President Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024, as did Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wasn’t so lucky.

In response to this horrifying trend, President Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, which directs federal agencies to combat organized political violence.

Trump’s memo defines Antifa as a movement that portrays “foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as ‘fascist’ to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution.” Antifa acts on ideas such as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

Trump notes that domestic terrorists use the “‘anti-fascist’ lie” to justify “a violent assault” on Americans and our way of life.

Antifa agitators seem adept at organizing locally without setting up a national network—almost as if they intend to provide analysts with the talking point that Antifa isn’t an organization.

Yet a Texas jury convicted eight members of an alleged Antifa cell last week for rioting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility on July 4 last year. Before the trial, seven defendants pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism.

Ryan Raybould, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, who prosecuted the case, said it demonstrates a “road map for charging individuals that commit violent acts that are coordinating through their Antifa affiliation.”

Raybould also noted, however, that these rioters had previously engaged in peaceful protest earlier that day—and that the charges had nothing to do with that.

Attempt to Silence Protests?

The American Civil Liberties Union condemned Trump’s memo as “a deliberate attempt to sow fear and intimidate and silence opposition to the president’s abuses.”

It reminds me of how Democrats responded when I testified in Congress about the way the Southern Poverty Law Center routinely demonizes conservatives and Christians by putting them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. Ironically, Democrats condemned the hearing as an attack on “civil society,” when the SPLC’s stock-in-trade involves the systematic attempt to silence conservatives in civil society.

The DOJ and IRS Confirm

This week, CBS News reported that the FBI and the IRS are gearing up to investigate potential funding streams behind political violence.

“In accordance with National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, IRS Criminal Investigation is collaborating with federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to investigate individuals and entities that may be funding domestic terrorism or political violence,” an IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson told The Daily Signal.

A Justice Department spokesperson told The Daily Signal that DOJ aims to bring “justice to the full range of criminal actors engaged in criminal conduct matching Congress’s definition of domestic terrorism,” while also “ensuring everyone has the freedom to speak in the public square.”

It is high time the FBI, IRS, and DOJ investigate the potential funding for Antifa and other leftist political violence. The Left has covered for the violence for too long, and agitators seem to think that they can get away with arson, rioting, and physical obstruction of ICE because they’re on “the right side of history.”

That said, the Trump administration’s effort to follow the money needs to focus on true violence, not peaceful protest. Leftists enjoy the same First Amendment rights to speak out as other Americans do, and the Supreme Court has rightly held that anonymous funding for political speech is also protected by the First Amendment.

Those protections end when violence or deprivation of rights begins, however. The 15 Antifa members who provided material support to terrorism in Texas are rightly facing prison time, and their convictions send an important message that leftist violence will not be tolerated.

Whether the FBI, IRS, and DOJ bring charges against funders of Antifa terrorism or not, the effort to follow the money sends an important message: you should think twice before bankrolling political violence, and the legacy media’s bias in favor of your causes will not protect you.

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Read the first chapter of The Woketopus right now for FREE

Today, even with President Trump’s victory, leftist elites have their tentacles in every aspect of our government.

The Daily Signal’s own Tyler O’Neil exposes this leftist cabal in his new book, The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.

In this book, O’Neil reveals how the Left’s NGO apparatus pursues its woke agenda, maneuvering like an octopus by circumventing Congress and entrenching its interests in the federal government.

You can read the first chapter of this new book for FREE in this eBook, The Woketopus: Chapter One using the secure link below.

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