Antifa rioters continue to plague American cities, but who pays for them?
Seamus Bruner, VP of Research for the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), is just back from a White House panel last week where independent journalists who have covered Antifa’s activities explained their findings for several Cabinet secretaries and President Donald Trump himself, a surprise attendee.
GAI’s crack team of researchers has already uncovered more than $100 million of taxpayer money fed into the protest industrial complex. Bruner shared GAI’s research with the president and the cabinet secretaries tracing the money that enables the rioting by Antifa and its allied groups. Trump was greatly impressed, interrupting Bruner’s presentation to make sure the names of the funding sources GAI has uncovered were shared with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
“Well, it’s the taxpayer funding that flows through the funding networks like the Soros funding network, Arabella funding network, Rockefeller and Tides funding networks,” Bruner tells colleagues Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers on the most recent Drill Down podcast. “Over a hundred million dollars that we’ve found from taxpayer grants have gone to these entities.”
This funding is usually done indirectly and goes to many organizations for ostensibly legitimate purposes. But money is fungible, and funds given to a group for one program may very often be diverted to another.
“Plus, Antifa is not the only problem here. It’s what we have called Riot Inc.,” Bruner explains. “There’s a whole bunch of other enablers of criminality — property destruction and people bailing [rioters] out and getting them back onto the streets,” Bruner tells Schweizer and Eggers.
He adds, echoing other White House panelists at last week’s event, “You see people who’ve been arrested are back out protesting the next day and going from city to city. They’re being transported.”
“This whole ecosystem of unrest — it’s somebody’s job,” Bruner says.
Trump has named Antifa a domestic and international terrorist organization, noting the active presence of Antifa “black bloc” operatives seen involved in rioting in cities like Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis.
Their activities range even wider. GAI just reported on the big money donors that funded the riots in Atlanta at the construction site for a police training facility in 2023. “Stop Cop City” rioters launched military-style assaults on the site. GAI’s report reveals that the protests were bankrolled by a shadowy network of left-wing billionaires and partisan nonprofits.
The organizers of the Stop Cop City protests were Network for Strong Communities Inc., Community Movement Builders, and the Climate Justice Alliance. These groups worked together on raising money, organizing demonstrations, coordinating bail funds, and providing supplies to protesters on the ground, GAI’s report reveals.
Funding networks such as these have caught the eye of President Trump, who recently hinted at a possible federal investigation into far left megadonor, George Soros. The administration is even considering going after some of these groups using the anti-racketeering statutes known as RICO.
“Nobody here at this table is opposed to people wanting to protest and express their First Amendment rights, but two things you mentioned that I think are key and were so devastating in the research you presented,” Schweizer says.
“Number one, the funding of these protests. Why are taxpayers actually funding organizations that are protesting? If you want to protest, do it on your own dime and your own time,” Schweizer says. “But the second part of it is the violence. It’s not a crime to protest — we welcome protests — but it’s the violence that often accompanies it.”
Bruner responds, adding that foreign-based funders are involved as well. Neville Roy Singham, an American billionaire and expatriate now living in China and friendly with its communist regime, started with the Black Lives Matter riots. “He was backing the groups that were organizing the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles, where they were summoning self-driving Waymo cars, only to torch them on fire.” Those groups include the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
GAI’s research team, under Bruner’s direction, continues to follow the money trails and he reveals that thy have already uncovered an additional $10 million in taxpayer funds that have flowed to groups who have been tied to violent protests.
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