Trump FBI and IRS Team Up to Probe US Nonprofit Groups for 'Domestic Terrorism' Links

A Wednesday CBS News report claimed that the FBI and Internal Revenue Service are "forming a new initiative to investigate nonprofit organizations over suspected possible links to domestic terrorism."

According to CBS News, the new initiative is the agencies' response to a December memo written by Attorney General Pam Bondi requiring the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to compile a list of potential “domestic terrorism” organizations that espouse "extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment."

A government official told CBS News that the FBI-IRS initiative would focus on "exploring potential funding streams at nonprofits that support domestic terrorism or political violence."

But Tom Brzozowski, former domestic terrorism counsel at the DOJ's National Security Division, told CBS News he was concerned by the broad scope of investigatory activities outlined in Bondi's memo, and he questioned whether the DOJ had established the proper predication to justify amassing a list of nonprofit groups to be targeted in a criminal probe.

"If you're going to pull down information and retain it in a government data set, you have to have predication to do that," Brzozowski emphasized, "especially if you're looking at it through an investigative lens."

Bondi's December memo was written in response to National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by President Donald Trump in September that demanded a "national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts."

Rights groups have for months been sounding the alarm about the implications of NSPM-7, which they said could be used to initiative a widespread crackdown against the Trump administration's critics.

Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of Campaign for New York Health, wrote that news of the FBI-IRS initiative was a "periodic reminder that Trump’s DOJ changed the indicators of domestic terrorism to include pro-immigrant, pro-LBTQ, anti-Trump, and anti-capitalist speech."

Journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote that the FBI's initiative with the IRS shows it's "trying to criminalize dissent over protecting against Islamic and antisemitic terrorism that Trump has stoked with his illegal war" against Iran.

Journalist Diego Fonseca noted that going after nonprofit groups has long been a hallmark of authoritarian regimes seeking to consolidate power.

"[Salvadoran President Nayib] Bukele has treated nongovernmental organizations as 'foreign agents,'" Fonseca observed, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán "has a 'Transparency Law' targeting civil society orgs. Left or right, it’s the authoritarian playbook: round up and paralyze any possible criticism."

Matt Ortega, a Democrat running to represent California's 14th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives, warned that the FBI-IRS initiative was a sign of a widespread crackdown against political opposition.

"They called Alex Pretti a 'domestic terrorist' and only backtracked because witnesses had NFL-like coverage of the incident," Ortega wrote. "This is repression carried out by the state for electoral purposes. It's about stamping out your objections to their autocratic aims."