Patel: You Better Believe the FBI Is Following the Money in MN

Question: Which money? The fraud money, or the riot money? The answer is … yes.

The Department of Justice has tracked the money in the massive and organized fraud schemes in Minnesota for months. Former US Attorney won two major fraud trials in Minnesota by tracking that money, and more cases will get filed and tried over the next several months. 

Now, however, the money funding the rioters on the streets of Minneapolis may turn into another massive scandal of its own. Yesterday, FBI Director Kash Patel told Benny Johnson that the bureau has already achieved some success in tracing the money tied to organized resistance efforts that have coordinated obstruction of ICE operations in the Twin Cities. No arrests have been made yet, Patel tells Johnson, but stay tuned, if you know what he means:

FBI Director Kash Patel Announces They’ve IDENTIFIED Funders Of The Left-Wing Terrorist Groups Attacking ICE In Minnesota, ‘This Isn’t Organic’

“We’ve got also investigations ongoing into the funding of this. We’ve made substantial progress. We’ve actually found groups and… pic.twitter.com/pDV7EIInE5

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 26, 2026

“We’ve got … investigations ongoing into the funding of this,” Patel told Johnson, stressing that the protests are “not happening organically” and that investigators have made “substantial progress” in uncovering groups and individuals financially backing them.

Patel also asserted that federal authorities are examining encrypted left-wing chats connected to protest organizers in Minnesota — warning those involved that they “should be worried” if they have violated federal statutes.

That’s a reference to the Signal chats that organized the obstruction and the links to activists as well as elected officials. Obstruction of federal law enforcement can be charged as a felony; conspiracy to violate federal law is a felony at all times. If money flowed into the organization, then theoretically RICO statutes might apply. However, those may (a) be a reach, and (b) not add much to the criminal liability of all involved, except to make it easier to apply all charges to all involved. A very ambitious prosecutor might consider that worth the effort, and it’s likely why the Signal participants are declaring themselves “f***ed” after their exposure. 

The day before this interview, DataRepublican exposed the donor lists of these Signal operations in a thread picked up by Twitchy. She posted links to a downloadable spreadsheet, along with promises that she has already shared more robust data with “the powers that be,” presumably the FBI or another federal law enforcement agency. A brief scan through the data shows that the majority of donors were at least smart enough to remain anonymous, but that may not help much when the FBI starts tracking the financial transactions. That money got transferred from credit cards or bank accounts at some point, and the FBI is very very good at financial tracking and analysis. 

And they will need to be in this instance, especially at identifying the true conspirators, even with this data in hand. Most donations to this fund appear minimal, but dozens involve $1000 or more. The largest donation in the spreadsheet is for $5000 from someone identified as Harper L. Woods, which is a pseudonym for a romance-book author (and may have been used falsely as a cover, obviously). One of those listed is the same name as my former attorney in Minnesota, which seems very unlikely to be legit, unless my former attorney would be dumb enough to put their own name on donations to groups intending to violate federal law. I include these notes not to call out the people listed, but to remind everyone that these names may well have been hijacked as covers for actual donors – so don’t leap to assumptions. Even with this head start on following the money, the FBI has some work to do, not to mention the work needed to determine whether the donors understood that they were funding a conspiracy to violate federal law. 

Let the professionals do their work. Kash Patel seems very enthusiastic about doing so. 

Speaking of enthusiasm, all of this exposure seems to have reinvigorated local officials into enforcing the law again:

Minnesota State Patrol has now been activated. They could have done this the whole time, but it wasn’t until after the call between Walz and Trump, and the discovery of the Signal groups involving Minnesota government officials, that this happened.pic.twitter.com/nTTAtRgZ3r

— Sarah Fields (@SarahisCensored) January 27, 2026

To quote Wilford Brimley in Absence of Malice: “Wonderful thing, subpoenas.” 

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