Trump orders crackdown on 'domestic terrorists' in escalation of a campaign against political rivals

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President Donald Trump on Thursday directed his administration to crack down on backers of what it described as “left-wing terrorism,” naming two top Democratic donors as he alleged without evidence a vast conspiracy to finance violent protests against the government.

Trump’s executive order put the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Taskforce in the lead and said the effort would span agencies across the administration, including the Treasury Department, “to identify and disrupt financial networks that fund domestic terrorism and political violence.”

The pursuit of what the president said were the funders of "agitators and anarchists” is the latest instance of Trump using the power of his office to persecute his political rivals. When pressed by a reporter to name any possible targets, he suggested two of the Democratic Party’s top donors — billionaires George Soros and Reid Hoffman.

“If they are funding these things, they're going to have some problems,” Trump said.

Trump had threatened such an order after the assassination earlier this month of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and a shooting outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Dallas, which killed one detainee and wounded two others. Authorities have identified the suspected gunmen in each case, but no information has been made public so far to suggest either was backed by a wider network. Authorities said a note found at the home of the gunman in the ICE shooting read, “Yes, it was just me.”

In a statement Thursday, before Trump's announcement, Soros' Open Society Foundation referred to previous accusations made by the Republican president, saying its activities are peaceful and lawful.

“These accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech,” the organizations said.

Hoffman, who helped start PayPal and the networking site LinkedIn, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The executive order is the latest startling action from Trump as he seeks to wield the Justice Department as a tool of retribution in a campaign to punish his perceived enemies and undercut the ability of Democrats to organize and raise money. Last spring, he ordered his attorney general to investigate ActBlue, the Democrats’ main fundraising platform, while allowing its conservative counterpart to escape scrutiny.

It also marks the second time this week Trump officially invoked the terrorism label. On Monday, he signed an order designating the decentralized movement known as antifa — short for “anti-fascists” — as a domestic terrorist organization, even though a former FBI official has said it was more an ideology than a cohesive group.

Trump has blamed the nation's recent surge of political violence solely on the left, even though Democrats as well as conservatives have been victims of attacks. A Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were killed in their home in June, the official residence of Pennsylvania's Democratic governor was firebombed earlier this year, and in 2022 the 82-year-old husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was assaulted by a hammer-wielding man who broke into their San Francisco home.

The order, however, cites only instances of violence targeting conservatives, including last year's assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The shooter had few visible political opinions and had also scouted President Joe Biden as a possible target.

Trump contended during Thursday's Oval Office signing that a shadowy conspiracy was behind some of the rowdier instances of civil disobedience directed at his administration, including the occupation of a Portland federal building during his first term and assaults by a group of black-masked antifa activists.

“These are professional agitators and anarchists, and they get hired by wealthy people, some of whom I know,” Trump said.

It was an allegation echoed by Vice President JD Vance and other top administration officials, although none provided any evidence of such a network. The order directs the Internal Revenue Service to withdraw tax-exempt status from any organization it identifies as funding political violence.

Trump named one of the most prolific funders of nonprofit organizations in the world as one of the possible suspect donors.

“Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing. I don't know,” Trump said when asked for examples of possible funders. “I hear names of some pretty rich people that are radical left people. ... Maybe I hear about a guy named Reid Hoffman, pretty rich guy I guess."

Hoffman is a regular funder of progressive and mainstream Democratic causes, including writer E. Jean Carroll's lawsuits against Trump that alleged he sexually assaulted and then defamed her.

Soros has long been a target of conservatives because of his progressive advocacy and spending on liberal causes.

A Hungarian Jew who survived the Nazi occupation, he made his billions as an investor. He donated to anti-communist causes in the 1980s that helped liberate eastern Europe and even funded a major university in his Hungarian hometown. But as his Open Society Foundation moved increasingly into areas of social justice, ranging from anti-poverty initiatives to LGBTQ and immigrants’ rights, Soros drew the ire of the right in the U.S. and globally.

In 2004, he jumped into partisan politics for the first time, donating to groups campaigning against Republican President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. Soros has continued to give to Democrats, becoming the top donor nationwide in some recent election cycles.

It was not immediately clear what authority the administration would use to make the terrorism designation. While the State Department keeps a list of foreign terror organizations, there is no domestic equivalent, in part because of the First Amendment protections in the U.S.

Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff, called the Democratic Party a “domestic extremist organization” last month on Fox News. In the Oval Office on Thursday, he noted the historic nature of Trump's action.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism,” Miller said.