FBI says mission center identified suspects in protest funding probe

FIRST ON FOX: The FBI’s newly created Joint Mission Center identified suspects, uncovered “nefarious” sources of funding behind violent interstate protests and began building criminal cases with federal prosecutors, FBI Co-Deputy Director Chris Raia told Fox News Digital.

In an exclusive interview at FBI headquarters, Raia said the bureau’s multi-agency mission center is moving beyond intelligence gathering to active financial investigations aimed at dismantling networks that finance political violence.

“We got funding from bad sources,” Raia said. “We have identified subjects. Getting those individuals charged and/or convicted is a slightly different story right now.”

Raia’s comments come as federal prosecutors in Acting U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche’s office are cracking down on nonprofit organizations allegedly linked to violent protest activity and possible illegal financing. As Fox News Digital exclusively reported on Monday, Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has opened a grand jury investigation into American communist tech mogul Neville Roy Singham and the network of nonprofits into which he has pumped nearly $285 million since 2017, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The grand jury issued subpoenas seeking financial records related to the Singham network, sources said. Raia did not speak specifically about the Singham case.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center, alleging bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, alleging that SPLC executives paid an informant who helped coordinate transportation, logistics and communications for the “Unite the Right” protests in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 that led to the death of a young woman named Heather Heyer.

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But Raia’s comments offer the clearest public indication yet that the Joint Mission Center, established earlier this year to coordinate the FBI’s response to domestic political violence, is producing concrete investigative results.

The center brings together counterterrorism, cyber, counterintelligence and financial investigators and experts from the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service to monitor funds flows, identify criminal actors and build prosecutable cases.

President Donald Trump following the assassination of Charlie Kirk in late September Issue The seventh National Security Presidential Memorandum titled “Combating Domestic Terrorism and Political Violence” or “NSPM-7.” The FBI has tasked Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) to expand their lens to investigate far-left threats in the United States

Last year, Raia worked as the assistant deputy in charge of the FBI’s New York field office. prisoner A protester named Tarek Bazrouk was charged with hate crimes for the violent attack on Jewish victims.

President Donald Trump designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization in a September 2025 executive order. (Diego Diaz/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

At the beginning of December, the Ministry of Justice issued a statement. memory“Implementing National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Combating Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” directs law enforcement to investigate “anti-fascist” actors who “hold extreme views on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment.” The directive also called for the investigation and prosecution of tax crimes “where extremist groups are suspected of defrauding the Revenue Service.”

FBI Director Kash Patel appointed Raia to the position of co-deputy director of the FBI in January, following the departure of Dan Bongino.

By March, the Trump administration FBI budget It included the establishment of the Joint Mission Center. He said agents assigned to the Joint Mission Center worked “hot and hard” to separate allegedly illegal financing from legitimate financial activity supporting nonprofits and advocacy groups.

“It’s going through some very legitimate routes and it’s also mixed in with very legitimate money,” Raia said. “So it just takes time to break it down.”

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Protesters wave American flags and hold banners during a ‘No to Kings’ demonstration. (Fox News Digital)

Raia said the bureau had already identified “at least some of the actors” believed to be financing or facilitating violent protest activities, but declined to identify investigative targets because the cases remain active.

“Every day, we work to bring an actionable case to the Department of Justice,” Raia said.

Raia said the bureau created the Joint Mission Center because violent political unrest has morphed into what authorities see as a “hybrid threat” that requires expertise that goes beyond traditional counterterrorism investigations.

“We brought together all these people from different departments at headquarters. And we brought them together to sit in the same space and really be a clearinghouse for these types of events that were happening,” Raia said.

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Singham and organizations in his network did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

As part of the investigation, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon earlier this year, sources said, and Solomon promised to assist the FBI in its efforts to track down how Singham allegedly diverted money through a network of nonprofit organizations that investigators believe supported protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other causes.

The Singham investigation illustrates the type of financial case the FBI’s Joint Mission Center was created to pursue: identifying and dismantling financing networks that investigators believe have led to repeated episodes of political violence across the country.

Raia described violent anti-ICE demonstrations in Minneapolis and at Delaney Hall, an immigration detention facility in Newark, N.J., the attempted terrorist plot at UFC 250 in Washington, D.C., and other incidents that federal officials believe show recurring patterns of organized violence.

As Fox News Digital previously reported, activists affiliated with the Singham network attended protests in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, as well as anti-ICE demonstrations at Delaney Hall.

“We’ve seen this, and we’ll continue to see it: The violent protester who shows up in Portland will be the violent protester who shows up at Delaney Hall, and vice versa,” Raia said. “The same cast of characters continues to show up and they continue to invade and infiltrate legitimate First Amendment protesters exercising their constitutionally granted First Amendment rights.”

“We know that these violent people come in and seed it, create chaos, create violence, get us involved. And we’re doing a good job of getting ahead of these people and disrupting these people,” he said.

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Raia said the FBI has harassed numerous violent actors over the past 15 months, including at anti-ICE demonstrations in New York City, and the bureau has increasingly shifted its focus beyond arrests at protest scenes to the financial infrastructure supporting those activities.

“We’re really aiming to attack the money. Who is financing these people? Because we know someone is at the end of financing these people,” Raia said.

Ren McEachern, former unit chief of the FBI’s International Corruption Unit, said following financial trails is often the quickest way to uncover the organizations, individuals and motivations behind coordinated political violence.

A demonstrator carries an anti-fascist banner during a protest during the 2020 Presidential election in New York, USA, on November 5, 2020. Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg)

“When you see well-organized, disorganized, or splinter protest groups emerge and re-emerge in different parts of the country, you need to identify funding sources to understand the organization,” McEachern said. “Often if you follow the money, it tells a different story about the organized collection and distribution of funds.”

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Fox News Digital’s Michael Ruiz and Hannah Brennan contributed to this report.