Trump signs order to dismantle left-wing groups he says are inciting violence

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at dismantling left-wing groups such as Antifa that he says are inciting political violence across the country.

The directive empowers scores of government agencies, including the Justice and Treasury departments, and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, to go after these groups by preventing them from carrying out violence and seizing their funding sources.

“We are looking at the funders of a lot of these groups,” Mr. Trump said. “These are anarchists and agitators, professional anarchists, and they get hired by wealthy people, some of whom I know.”

Mr. Trump declined to name a specific liberal political donor who is funding these groups, but then added  that megadonor and billionaire George Soros “is a name, certainly, that I keep hearing.”

“I hear a lot of different names. I hear names of some pretty rich people that are radical left people. Maybe I hear about a guy named Reid Hoffman,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Hoffman, an internet billionaire who co-founded LinkedIn, is a major Democratic donor who funds a range of liberal and anti-Trump organizations through his investment networks.

Both Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Soros have long denied any wrongdoing.

White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said left-wing groups started inciting violence around the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots and are now attacking Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and waging doxxing campaigns, all the way up to political assassinations.

“These are not lone isolated events. This is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism. It is structured. It is sophisticated. It is well-funded. It is well-planned. There is really no parallel like this, anything else in the country right now,” Mr. Miller said.

When asked to name other organizations besides Antifa that would be targeted under the executive order, Attorney General Pam Bondi said it is aimed at “any organized group, anywhere who are committing these crimes.”

Mr. Trump signed the order the day after a gunman killed one detainee and wounded two others at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas. ICE has been at the forefront of Mr. Trump’s push to curb illegal immigration, which has spawned protests and condemnation from Democrats and immigration activists.

It also comes two weeks after Mr. Trump’s friend, conservative influencer and activist Charlie Kirk, was assassinated while speaking at a college campus in Utah.

Authorities have released few details about the motives in both shootings, but the evidence released so far by the administration has suggested the suspected killers were influenced by left-wing ideology. The Trump administration has seized on that evidence to rally support for a broader crackdown on left-wing groups.

Earlier this week, Mr. Trump signed a separate executive order that declared Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization” and threatened to investigate and prosecute those who financially support it.

Mr. Trump said earlier this year that he had spoken with Ms. Bondi about potentially using racketeering charges to go after such groups.