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FBI and IRS agents are forming a new initiative to investigate nonprofit organizations over suspected possible links to domestic terrorism, sources briefed on the matter told CBS News.
In December, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to prioritize efforts to investigate and prosecute groups and individuals who belong to the anti-fascist antifa movement or are deemed “extremist.”
“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 asked law enforcement agents to consider potential “tax crimes” in which extremist groups are “suspected of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service.”
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.
“The Department of Justice is fully committed to preserving the rule of law, protecting law enforcement from coordinated attacks, ensuring everyone has the freedom to speak in the public square, participate freely in the electoral process, and practice their faith without fear of violence or harm, and bringing to justice the full range of criminal actors engaged in criminal conduct matching Congress’s definition of domestic terrorism,” a Justice Department spokesperson said.
A government official confirmed the plans for the FBI-IRS partnership, adding that the focus will be on exploring potential funding streams at nonprofits that support domestic terrorism or political violence.
The new “mission control command center” that is probing nonprofits will be based at the FBI, with agents from IRS Criminal Investigations working on one-year temporary assignments, one of the sources added.
It is not yet clear what groups could be targeted for investigation, though Bondi’s memo instructed all federal law enforcement agencies to scour their files for intelligence on antifa groups and forward it to the FBI.
The FBI was also ordered to develop a list of groups that are engaged in acts that “may constitute domestic terrorism,” as defined by federal law.
Such individuals or groups are, according to the law, involved in “acts dangerous to human life” that occur within the U.S. and may be intended to intimidate or coerce people, influence government policy through intimidation or affect the conduct of the government “by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.”
Although the term is defined in the law, there is no criminal charge on the books for domestic terrorism. Prosecutors typically charge defendants with other crimes and seek terrorism enhancements at sentencing.
Tom Brzozowski, the former domestic terrorism counsel at the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said the investigative approach laid out by Bondi in her December memo is concerning and raises questions about what predication the FBI has in order to legally justify creating a list of groups that should be 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,” he told CBS News. “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.”
Bondi issued her memo after President Trump in late September issued an executive order on domestic terrorism that was sparked by a series of high-profile events, including the 2025 assassination of far-right influencer Charlie Kirk.
In addition to the FBI-IRS joint initiative, the deputy attorney general’s office has also been involved in creating a task force focused on looking into funding into antifa-linked groups, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
U.S. attorney offices, meanwhile, have also been asked to assign a domestic terrorism coordinator, one of the sources added.
