Good evening America. Happy Friday and welcome to a very special edition of Just a News Noise. Tonight we are going to be talking about nonprofit nonsense. I'm going to explain in a second, but first let's get the formalities out of the way. I'm your host, John Solomon, reporting to you as always from the nation's capital. In America, we allow billions of dollars to flow through our economy through nonprofits and charities each year without charging those entities taxes. They're called tax-exempt groups, nonprofits, charities in layman's language. But increasingly those charities have become more political, more violent, more anti-American, and yet their tax breaks have stayed intact. This has concerned Congress in a big way over the last several months. We've had multiple members of Congress, you're going to get two more tonight, who want some of these groups' tax exemptions to be removed to make them pay taxes on the money that they collect from their donors. Why? Well, just take the last few months for some examples. We have seen evidence in the last several months that a charity collecting money in the name of fighting extremism was actually funding extremists. We've seen charities defraud the United States government and all of these large fraud schemes that are being uncovered by JD Vance and the Minneapolis prosecutors. We've seen other charities foment violence and unrest, anti-semitism, efforts to impede a law enforcement officer like ICE agents from doing their job using your tax exemption. You're being cheated that money when they take those activities in the name of doing good for the country and they don't actually do good. Tonight, we are going to dive into this issue in a second. We're going to be joined by the man at the top of the food chain for President Trump on this, the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. We also have the chairman of the House Committee that's taking a special task force look at this. Congressman Gil will be here in a little bit, Senator Ron Johnson, and a couple people who've been investigating this in the private sector who are now filing complaints. Before we get to them, let me turn to my amazing co-host, Amanda Head. Amanda, the last 6 months, I think we've seen more examples of charities gone bad, of nonprofit nonsense than any time in my 40 years as a reporter. It feels like the moment of crackdown may be upon us.
Absolutely. Well, and I look forward to talking to the Treasury Secretary about what silver bullets are available. Obviously, that tax exempt status is how so many of these organizations survive and even thrive. But also, you know, this pattern that you and I have detected, I'm going to ask the secretary about this pattern we've seen of government funding in the form of grants or other types of legislatively allocated funds that go to these organizations. Then the organizations get that money back to the politicians through donations and campaign funds. And it's a really ugly cycle that at some point there's got to be a stop.
Yeah. And then you have the fact that some of these charities were paid to basically traffic illegal aliens into the interior of the country. All these things are done in the name of doing good and getting a tax exemption, but they're not doing good for America. They're actually harming America. Recently in the last few months, the Treasury Department and the FBI created a special task force to start dealing in this. It brings all the resources of all the agencies to the forefront. We're very lucky to be joined by the man who just started that project. All right, joining us now, the United States Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent. Sir, great to have you on the show.
John. Good to be with you.
You have your finger in so many important things, but people are stepping back now. They're starting to understand that the nonprofit world we created for charity has gone a little bit astray. We got people defrauding the government, people impeding the government, people spreading anti-Americanism and foreign propaganda. I know you and your team are working hard to sort through that. Give us an update on what you found and what you think might be some of the solutions.
Well, John, as you said, this is an important area. Nonprofits are mid-teens in terms of our national economy and it's an area that's largely gone unchecked because we think of them as good altruistic service organizations and most of them are, but there are some poorly behaved and organizations with nefarious behavior. And John, the main thing I want to begin by emphasizing is nonprofit status is a privilege. It is a privilege. The right to be exempt from paying taxes, from being able to take donations that are tax-deductible and have private citizens apply that against their taxes is a privilege. And we believe that there are many organizations who are violating this privilege. And we have started under the president's leadership with a memorandum that was issued last September. We are starting to investigate how some of these organizations are taking advantage of the system, whether they should have their status revoked and whether the directors and trustees should be held accountable.
That's important, Mr. Secretary. That distinction, the tax exempt status being taken away, that is certainly a silver bullet. But what's the threshold? Because these days when you're looking at a lot of these organizations that are performing anti-American measures, frankly, these days that's subjective. What's the bar?
Well, again, we support free speech and that's obviously a right that everyone believes in, but when do you step over that line? When are you condoning violence? When are you condoning illegal activities? And when are you taking away other people's rights? And that's how we are thinking about it. We are getting lots of inbound in terms of both complaints and prospective investigations into these organizations and many of them have operated with impunity. So again, we want to respect free speech, but we also don't want to have the government supporting organizations that suppress free speech.
Yeah. So important. Sir, I want to ask a little bit about one big example that the Trump administration has already succeeded at. I believe the IRS was part of the team alongside the FBI. We had a charity that for decades said it was collecting money to fight extremism. It turns out they were taking that money and actually funding extremism. Of course, we're talking about the Southern Poverty Law Center. I know there's a criminal case ongoing. They got to go through the jury process. On the enforcement side, what could a group like that, now that the evidence is in the public, what could a group like that face in the near future?
Again, John, many things can happen. I don't want to comment too much where there's ongoing litigation, but if they have their status revoked, could their assets be frozen? Could the assets be seized? Because it was obviously a great deal of deceptive marketing to the donors. And what did the donors know? And most importantly, they have a board of directors or they have trustees that all nonprofits have to fill out a form called 990. And we have made it clear, Treasury or IRS has issued guidance over the past few months for these 990s that we are going to hold the directors and trustees accountable for their grantees. One of the things that we do here with our FinCEN apparatus at Treasury, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, is you know it is the KYC, know your client, for banks and financial institutions, and we are going to hold these nonprofit trustees and directors. They need to know their grantees. If you are giving money, you can't just give the money away and then wipe your hands of it. There's something these fiscal authorities and they pretend that they're not linked. We are going to investigate those and it is going to go right up to the directors and they can be held criminally liable.
