For years, the official line on Antifa was that it didn’t really exist. Not as an organization. Not as anything with structure, funding, or coordination. It was “an idea,” according to Joe Biden. Barack Obama treated it the same way — a loose concept, not a funded operation. Nothing to see here.
Kash Patel just burned that fiction to the ground.
The FBI Director went on Dan Bongino’s show this week and said what everyone who’s watched Antifa operate has known for years: these people don’t show up by magic. They show up because somebody pays for it.
“These organizations don’t operate alone or in silence,” Patel said. “They operate with a heavy, heavy stream of funding. And we started looking into it, and guess what? We found them.”
Three words. We found them. And he’s not ready to say who — yet.
Following the Money
Patel confirmed that the FBI under President Trump has been conducting a financial investigation into how Antifa-linked demonstrations are funded and supported. Not a political investigation. Not a social media monitoring operation. A financial investigation — the kind that traces bank accounts, wire transfers, nonprofit filings, and donor networks.
“Money doesn’t lie,” Patel said.
He’s right. And that’s why financial investigations are the one thing that every organized criminal enterprise, every dark money network, and every covertly funded political operation fears most. You can hide behind masks. You can use encrypted communications. You can organize through decentralized cells. But at some point, someone has to pay for the bus tickets, the bail funds, the legal representation, the supplies, and the infrastructure that allows hundreds of identically dressed people to materialize on a street corner within hours of an event.
That money comes from somewhere. It flows through something. And now the FBI says they know where and what.
The “Idea” That Shoots People
Patel took a direct shot at the former presidents who spent years providing rhetorical cover for Antifa’s violence. “It’s not an idea when actual action follows the idea,” he said.
The action has been escalating. In 2016, anti-Trump protests erupted across the country with suspicious coordination and identical tactics. In 2020, the George Floyd riots caused billions in property damage, with Antifa-affiliated actors embedded in protests across dozens of cities. Since Trump’s second term began, anti-ICE demonstrations in blue cities have featured the same black-bloc tactics, the same coordinated aggression, the same overnight mobilization.
And the violence is getting worse. Nine anti-ICE activists have been charged with ambushing an ICE officer in Texas and wounding him with gunfire. That’s not a protest. That’s an attempted assassination. A federal judge declared a mistrial — not on the merits, but because the defense attorney wore a politically charged T-shirt in court, which is either the dumbest legal move in modern trial history or a deliberate attempt to force a do-over.
At Reed College in Portland, a public safety director cooperated with the FBI to identify an Antifa-linked individual named Hoopes. The college’s response? They fired the safety director. Not the suspect. The man who helped the FBI. And leftists publicly denounced him for cooperating with law enforcement.
That’s the ecosystem Patel is investigating. An ecosystem where helping the FBI identify violent actors gets you fired, where shooting an ICE officer gets you a sympathetic defense attorney, and where billions of dollars in riot damage gets explained away as “an idea.”
Who’s Paying?
Patel didn’t name names. He said more details could emerge in the coming months as the investigation continues. That’s standard practice for a financial investigation — you don’t reveal targets before you’ve built the case. But the fact that he went public at all — on a major podcast, with specific language about “heavy funding streams” and the declaration “we found them” — suggests the investigation has progressed past the preliminary stage.
The question everyone wants answered: who’s writing the checks?
The possibilities range from domestic nonprofits laundering donations through fiscal sponsors, to dark money networks using pass-through entities to obscure the source, to foreign actors using activist organizations as fronts. All of these models have been documented in other contexts. The question is which ones apply to Antifa — and whether the donors are individuals, organizations, or something larger.
If it’s individual billionaires funding political violence through nonprofit intermediaries, the legal exposure is enormous. If it’s organizations with tax-exempt status channeling donations to violent actors, the IRS implications alone could be devastating. And if there’s any foreign money in the pipeline, the national security dimension turns this from a domestic law enforcement matter into something much bigger.
The Pattern
Watch the pattern. Antifa doesn’t appear randomly. It appears where there are cameras, where there’s political tension, and where the violence serves a strategic purpose — whether that’s discrediting a protest, escalating a confrontation, or creating the kind of chaos that makes enforcement look heavy-handed.
That requires coordination. Coordination requires communication. Communication requires infrastructure. And infrastructure requires money.
Nobody spends that money for free. Nobody funds a nationwide network of violent actors out of pure ideological conviction without expecting something in return. The money has a source. The source has a motive. And now the FBI says it knows who they are.
Patel elevated the issue internally. The investigation is active. No charges have been announced yet — but the public statement signals that they’re coming. You don’t go on national media and say “we found them” unless you’re preparing the ground for what comes next.
The masks are about to come off. Not just the black balaclavas in the streets. The ones behind the bank accounts.