President Trump on Thursday ordered his administration to investigate what he claimed were rich people and organizations funding left-wing political violence around the country, citing the recent assassination of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
In a presidential memorandum, Mr. Trump moved to marshal the forces of the F.B.I., Justice Department and Treasury Department to find and prosecute such activity and the “institutional and individual funders, and officers and employees of organizations, that are responsible for, sponsor or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct.”
The accusation — that liberal activists and organizations have secretly funded and organized a kind of professional brigade of anarchists around the country to attack law enforcement officers, destroy property and create public havoc — was one that Mr. Trump has made many times before.
Law enforcement officials have long said that efforts like the antifascist movement, or antifa, are more of a disparate collection of like-minded people who generally do not take instruction from organizational leaders. Mr. Trump has argued the opposite, claiming without evidence that hidden hands fund, aid and direct attacks on the government, law enforcement and Republicans.
“We’re looking at the funders of a lot of these groups,” he said on Thursday, adding that “wealthy people” were hiring “professional anarchists and agitators.”
The White House announcement was attended by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who indicated that the bureau’s joint terrorism task forces would be used to carry out the president’s directive.
The memorandum ordered those task forces to provide regular updates to Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, who called the plan “an all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle antifa.”
The White House announcement came hours after The New York Times reported that a senior Justice Department official had instructed more than a half dozen U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country to present plans for investigating a philanthropic organization funded by the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros.
Asked if the memorandum was related to the department’s interest in investigating Mr. Soros’s group, Mr. Trump was evasive, but said that Mr. Soros would “be a likely candidate” for investigation.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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