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

Opinion>Opinions - Finance The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill The FBI is finally following the money on mass protest-funding Comments: by Jay Rogers, opinion contributor - 07/08/26 7:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Jay Rogers, opinion contributor - 07/08/26 7:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied

AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan Protesters with the Party of Socialism and Liberation hand out pre-printed protest signs in downtown Albuquerque in 2018.

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 National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which Trump signed Sept. 25, directing agencies to disrupt the money behind political violence, with Treasury and IRS ordered to “follow the money.” I have long argued for a Protest Transparency Act, modeled after the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. It would require Justice Department registration for any organization paying more than $3,500 in a given quarter to coordinate demonstrations. Congress hasn’t passed any such thing, but the executive branch has decided not to wait.

Raia called the problem a “hybrid threat,” blending ideology, logistics and money in ways unsuited to the old counterterrorism org chart. “The violent protester that shows up in Portland will be a violent protester that shows up at Delaney Hall (in Newark) and vice versa,” he said, describing agitators who “invade and infiltrate” citizens actually exercising their rights to freedom of assembly. The law should not be targeting peaceful protest, but the paid infrastructure that bad actors can use to hijack it.

The case drawing the most attention now involves Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen based in Communist China who has allegedly moved “hundreds of millions of dollars” since 2017 through a nonprofit network into far-left entities. Republican members of the House Oversight Committee wrote to Singham in June to say they were “concerned that you may be engaging in such activities on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party,” and the Washington Times has reported that a federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating.

Federal prosecutors in the Middle District of Alabama are also pursuing the Southern Poverty Law Center on bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering charges. They have alleged, among other things, that the organization’s executives paid an informant who helped coordinate logistics for the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville — the white supremacist rally that troubled the entire nation and caused the death of Heather Heyer. Wherever the money comes from and whatever entities it passes through, its use to manufacture violence and undermine the rule of law should bring consequences.

Raia said that indictments are not guaranteed and timelines are not fixed. Fair enough — better to get it right than to be fast. But the government’s focus on this problem validates that the disclosure gap between registered lobbyists and paid protest organizers was never one related to principle. It was, rather, a question of oversight, and a convenient one for those who would make use of it.

Congress has not passed a bill requiring transparency for large-scale protest-funding, but the FBI just showed why it should. When investigators need a presidential memorandum and a multi-agency task force to do what a statute could accomplish with a simple filing requirement, that’s not efficient law enforcement. A disclosure statute would cost no more than a filing clerk’s salary. A Joint Mission Center requires pulling agents from four divisions, plus Treasury and IRS specialists, chasing what a registration form could have disclosed for free.

It is time to close the gap. Apply a disclosure requirement to every funding source, regardless of ideology, and let the next presidential memorandum go unwritten.

Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management.

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