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Trump FBI and IRS Team Up to Probe US Nonprofit Groups for 'Domestic Terrorism' Links
"This is repression carried out by the state for electoral purposes. It's about stamping out your objections to their autocratic aims," said one critic.
Mar 18, 2026
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."
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'The FBI Has the Records': 2020 Arizona Audit Info Subpoenaed by Grand Jury
The records taken by the FBI relate to an audit that confirmed Trump's loss in the Grand Canyon State to former President Joe Biden.
Mar 09, 2026
The FBI has served the Arizona State Senate a grand jury subpoena for voting records related to the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona, in the latest sign that the federal government is working to investigate an election that President Donald Trump lost more than five years ago.
As the New York Times reported on Monday, the grand jury subpoena "was issued in recent days to the Arizona State Senate, which oversaw a sprawling but partisan audit of the vote result that was ordered by Senate Republicans in Maricopa County" months after Trump lost the 2020 race to former President Joe Biden.
Warren Petersen, the Republican president of the Arizona Senate, confirmed that he had received and complied with the subpoena, and revealed in a social media post that "the FBI has the records" related to the post-2020 audit.
As noted by MS NOW reporter Vaughn Hillyard, the audit in question was conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a now-defunct online security firm that confirmed Trump's defeat in the Grand Canyon State.
"The Cyber Ninjas found that, in fact, Joe Biden had won the county, per their hand count, by 360 more votes than originally believed," Hillyard explained.
The Trump administration's subpoena of the audit records comes at the same time that it is demanding Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes hand over his state's voter registration data.
As explained by the Brennan Center for Justice last week, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is "seeking access to highly sensitive voter information, including partial Social Security numbers," as part of its subpoena.
The Brennan Center also said it teamed up with the Campaign Legal Center to file a brief to oppose the Trump administration's lawsuit against Arizona, which it described as "part of an unprecedented nationwide effort to force states to turn over private voter data."
The FBI in January executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center that allowed federal agents to seize 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data, and voter rolls.
Shortly after the raid, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory predicted that this kind of operation would likely be spreading to other counties and states.
“Fulton County is right now the target,” Ivory said. “But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue.”
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Whistleblower: Kash Patel's Use of FBI Jets for Personal Travel Delayed Murder Probe
"The FBI cannot afford to have its resources further stretched by a director who views its staff and aircraft as a means to support his jet-setting lifestyle."
Feb 24, 2026
A whistleblower is claiming that FBI Director Kash Patel's frequent use of one of the agency's two jets has led to the delay of a high-profile murder probe.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday revealed he had received new whistleblower disclosures related to his investigations into Patel's use of FBI aircraft for personal travel, and he said they showed Patel's decisions regarding the use of FBI planes had delayed investigations not only into the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk but also the November 2025 mass shooting at Brown University.
In the case of Kirk, Durbin said that the FBI shooting reconstruction team's deployment to Utah "was delayed by at least a day because of a bureau plane and pilot shortage caused by the director's personal flights."
Durbin said that he also received information showing how Patel bungled the aftermath of the Brown shooting by putting the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) on standby to respond to the incident.
"The director’s decision caused immediate confusion," Durbin said, "because that order was not communicated to HRT; it upended the responsibility typically assigned to the local field office closest to the incident in question—in this case Boston or New York City—to provide immediate support; and it froze the aircraft’s usage by any other FBI team until the director removed the hold."
Durbin then said that the whistleblower described how his team "had to drive from Quantico, Virginia to Providence, Rhode Island overnight during a winter storm to reach the scene by 9:00 am the following morning to immediately process evidence."
Durbin noted he received this information shortly after Patel was seen chugging down a beer in the locker room of the gold medal-winning US men's Olympic hockey team on Sunday, after the director once again used an FBI plane to fly to Milan, Italy.
The Democratic senator said that Patel's trip to Italy could have seriously hampered the FBI's ability to investigate what may have been an assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.
"It also cannot be ignored that the director’s latest personal jaunt occurred on the same weekend an armed intruder attempted to breach President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence," Durbin explained. "The man was allegedly carrying a gas can and a shotgun, and he was killed on the scene by law enforcement."
Durbin concluded by saying that "the FBI cannot afford to have its resources further stretched by a director who views its staff and aircraft as a means to support his jet-setting lifestyle."
MS NOW reported that an FBI spokesperson has "disputed" the whistleblower's claims that Patel's decisions had caused delays to investigations, but added that they need to "check into the matter more deeply to gather information."
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