Yves here. So Trump is pulling out the attack dogs to silence free speech and criticism of his disastrous policies. The problem of course is that many of the targets may not have the resources to fight a bogus IRS revocation of not-for-profit status, let alone an FBI terrorism investigation, as politically motivated. The usual way to do these things is “Kill a chicken to scare the monkey” as in to seek to make some cases high profile so as to frighten other organizations into self-censorship.
By Brad Reed, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
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 left is just as bad when they are in power.
Remove ALL government funding from NGO’s and make funding transparent.
Tribalism leads to stupidity
Do you regularly put your foot in mouth and chew?
Not-for-profit status is germane for funding by private parties, not government.
While the original commenter might be surprised by the number of people in small-to-midsize (or even big) cities who depend on majority government-funded nonprofits to survive, US states do follow federal nonprofit status in granting exemption from property and sales taxes. I don’t know how many nonprofits would go under without these exemptions, but they do apply regardless funding source. Just saying.
The wonderfully ambiguous nature of a phrase such as “anti-American sentiment” is the key here. Essentially, anything the Establishment wants to suppress can, and will, be couched in terms “suggestive” of said definition. Then the legal proceedings er, games, will commence.
Jonathan Swift, no stranger to “official proceedings” himself, parodied this way back in the early 1700s. He had a piece where he showcased how ridiculously “officials” could twist words and meanings in a person’s speech and writings to show the “guilt” of anyone for any crime.
I hope that someone has the testicular fortitude to open their argument in court with a paraphrase of the old Gladiator’s Greeting: “We who are about to be suppressed, salute you!”
Stay safe, but not too safe(TM).
The ongoing war on Iran is undeniably both violent and political (one of its oft-stated aims being regime change). Does The Don really want law enforcement investigating “networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence … before they result in violent political acts”? Of course he doesn’t. He just wants any potential opposition investigated and disrupted.
The FBI is now investigating Joe Kemp.
The CIA going after Tucker Carlson too. Tucker has had an epiphany since being fired from FOX when he was their most watched show.
It’s interesting that the dissenters on the right are being attacked for their insubordination…and I find myself in agreement with people whom I once couldn’t stand to listen to. I mean when you’ve lost MTG & Megyn Kelly…
We live in interesting times…
PS: Yves got a shout out from Michael Hudson on Dialogue Works today.