The FBI is finally following the money on mass protest-funding

Astroturf and foreign-adjacent protest-funding networks are rapidly outgrowing the First Amendment protections our founders built for citizens peacefully demonstrating in the town square. I have long believed that Congress needs to pass a disclosure law with teeth for those who would manufacture public opinion, turn Americans against each other and sometimes even encourage violent actions through the mass-funding of public demonstrations.

But the FBI may already be taking action without waiting for Congress to catch up.

FBI Co-Deputy Director Chris Raia recently told Fox News that the bureau’s new Joint Mission Center has moved past watching and into building cases. “We found funding from nefarious sources,” he claimed. “We have subjects identified.” But getting an indictment, he added, is “a little bit different story right now.”

In other words, discovery is not the hard part — the hard part is proving it. It is one thing for Republican lawmakers to claim that foreign actors or even foreign regimes are attempting to influence public opinion — to stoke public opposition to data centers, for example. It is quite another to make a solid case that will hold up in court.

I recognize that pattern from private credit and expert-witness work, where finding the suspect money is rarely the challenge. Raia put it more plainly: The money “goes through some very legitimate hoops” and gets “commingled with very legitimate money.” Splitting the two apart, he said, “just takes time.”

The Joint Mission Center exists under........

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