The FBI and IRS are teaming up to investigate nonprofit organizations over suspected links to domestic terrorism in a sweeping new initiative that critics warn could be used to target left-wing political groups, CBS News reported Wednesday.
The joint operation, which will be based at the FBI with IRS Criminal Investigation agents working on one-year temporary assignments, stems from a December memo by Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering federal law enforcement to prioritize investigations into antifa and other groups she deemed “extremist.”
Bondi’s memo cast a wide net.
“These domestic terrorists use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including 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,” Bondi wrote in the Dec. 4 memo.
The memo also instructed agents to probe potential tax crimes by groups “suspected of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service,” raising alarm among civil liberties advocates about the weaponization of tax enforcement against political opponents.
Tom Brzozowski, the former domestic terrorism counsel at the Justice Department, told the outlet the approach raises serious legal questions about whether the FBI has sufficient legal basis to build lists of groups targeted for criminal investigation.
Federal investigators “can look at open source information all they want. They don’t need any kind of particular predication to do that. If you’re going to pull down information and retain it in a government data set, you have to have predication to do that – especially if you’re looking at it through an investigative lens.”
Antifa notably never came up when FBI Director Kash Patel testified Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
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