FIRST ON FOX: Congress’s powerful Ways and Means Committee is expanding its investigation into an alleged “foreign-aligned influence network” that happened to be at the heart of the anti-American, pro-communist protests unleashed on the country’s streets on May Day.
Just after 1 p.m. on Friday, a black minivan pulled up to the curb on Union Square East in Lower Manhattan, and David Chung, organizing director of a national nonprofit, the People’s Forum, started quickly unpacking megaphones and bright yellow pre-made protest signs, including the message, “TRUMP IS THE SYMPTOM. CAPITALISM IS THE DISEASE. SOCIALISM IS THE CURE!”
Below the denunciation of the U.S. free enterprise system was the name “PARTY FOR SOCIALISM AND LIBERATION,” a self-declared Marxist communist group that worked closely with the People’s Forum as part of a network of 600 groups with $2 billion in collective funding behind protests on May 1, known as May Day. The scene repeated itself in cities across the country, with foot soldiers from the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Washington, D.C., chapter among the first to arrive for May Day protests, pulling identical bright yellow pre-made signs out of a black Subaru Outback parked on 21st Street NW.
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Fox News Digital has now learned that House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith is escalating an investigation into an alleged malign influence of Neville Roy Singham, an American-born Marxist tech tycoon living in Shanghai, funding the People’s Forum and two other pro-communist, pro-China nonprofits headquartered in the U.S., BreakThrough BT Media Inc. and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, which regularly publish pro-China propaganda criticizing the U.S. as the “belly of the beast” and an “imperialist” power.
On Monday, Smith sent letters, obtained by Fox News Digital, to the three groups, raising “significant concerns” about “foreign influence or control” in the U.S. and the “financing arrangements and the structure of a foreign-aligned influence network, not protected speech or association.”
According to a Fox News Digital investigation published into the so-called “House of Singham,” the wealthy tech mogul has pumped a documented $278 million into a network of nonprofits, including the three groups, since 2017, pressing anti-American, pro-communist ideology in the U.S. and globally.
Smith repeatedly describes the three groups as part of an “interconnected network of organizations,” telling each nonprofit, “The Committee is considering whether legislative or regulatory reform is necessary to ensure that tax-exempt status is not used to facilitate or obscure foreign influence across an interconnected network of organizations.”
While the congressional investigation isn’t a direct response to the May Day protests, the deepening investigation reveals a wider concern among lawmakers and Trump administration officials in the Treasury, Justice and State departments. They tell Fox News Digital they are concerned that overseas interests are exploiting U.S. nonprofit laws to create an infrastructure and industry that asserts “foreign malign influence” in the U.S., operating through tax-exempt organizations, donor-advised funds, shell companies, fiscal sponsorships and media platforms.
In his letter to the People’s Forum, Smith alleged that Singham and his wife, CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans, had funneled money into groups “through shell companies and donor-advised funds that, by design, obscure the true source of contributions.”
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The Missouri Republican lawmaker has ordered each organization to turn over internal documents related to the investigation by May 18, including communications with Singham, records of foreign-linked donations exceeding $5,000, contracts tied to fiscal sponsorship arrangements, communications with foreign principals and lists of grant recipients located outside the U.S.
The letters to the People’s Forum, BreakThrough and Tricontinental reveal a congressional strategy in which lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Oversight Committee have been trying to use their jurisdiction over tax-exempt organizations to examine whether nonprofit law is equipped to deal with the infrastructure that influence-peddlers allegedly build to bankroll activism, amplify propaganda and influence elections.
At a hearing earlier this year into the role of malign foreign influence in the U.S., Smith rebuked the groups for “sowing discord” in the country.
Smith’s letters also show the common defense mounted by the groups, whose lawyers argue that the inquiry is political, exceeds the committee’s jurisdiction, improperly invokes the Foreign Agents Registration Act, called FARA, and threatens First Amendment rights. Smith rejected those arguments, writing that “none of those challenges withstands scrutiny.”
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According to the letters, Washington, D.C., attorney Andrew Herman is representing BreakThrough and Tricontinental, along with Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a far-left 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that is also representing the People’s Forum. Herman and Verheyden-Hilliard didn’t respond to requests for comment.
According to digital records, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund shares the same address at a Florida Avenue NW townhouse that is used by the ANSWER Coalition, a self-described communist group that also operates out of the People’s Forum headquarters on W. 37th Street in Midtown Manhattan.
When approached outside the People’s Forum in late January, People’s Forum Executive Director Manolo De Los Santos, ANSWER Coalition and Party for Socialism and Liberation co-founder Brian Becker and BreakThrough editor-in-chief Ben Becker refused to answer questions about Singham’s funding to their groups. De Los Santos is a researcher at Tricontinental.
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At the center of the congressional investigation is the influence of Singham. In 2017, Singham sold Thoughtworks, a company that he established, to a private equity firm, Apax Partners, for an estimated $785 million. He then used cash from the sale to build a network of nonprofits that promulgates anti-American Marxist ideology. A spokeswoman for Apax Partners told Fox News Digital that the firm wouldn’t reveal the identities of the investors that purchased Thoughtworks.
In his letters, Smith describes Singham as a former U.S. technology executive “now residing in Shanghai with documented [Chinese Communist Party] affiliations,” and he identifies the three Singham-funded organizations as three nodes in a complex “foreign-aligned influence network.” In a video unearthed by Fox News Digital, Singham expressed support at a conference co-sponsored by Tricontinental at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Shanghai, expressing support for the CCP, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Xi’s “new world order.”
In letters to BreakThrough News and Tricontinental, Smith said that he was investigating whether the groups are “acting as an agent of a foreign principal.”
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According to a Fox News Digital investigation, Singham has funneled $22.44 million to the People’s Forum between 2017 and 2022 through GS Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc., a donor-advised fund affiliated with Goldman Sachs. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs told Fox News Digital that the philanthropy terminated its relationship with Singham in early 2024.
Meanwhile, the Fox News Digital investigation found that Singham pumped $16.76 million into Tricontinental Ltd., through the Goldman Sachs philanthropy fund, and he funneled $1.098 million to BreakThrough BT Media Inc. from the Goldman Sachs fund, $2.1 million from the Justice and Education Fund, another Singham-funded nonprofit, and $60,600 from the Progress Unity Fund, another organization in the wider Singham network.
Chung, the People’s Forum organizing director, was listed as chair of the Justice and Education Fund in its 2024 tax filing, with De Los Santos, from the People’s Forum and Tricontinental, and Karina Garcia, a leader with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, also on its board.
Smith focused on the People’s Forum’s role as a so-called “fiscal sponsor,” collecting tax-deductible donations for like-minded projects, writing that the group provides “fiduciary oversight, financial management and administrative services” for affiliated entities, an arrangement he said “may allow foreign-influenced funds to flow to downstream organizations.”
The committee’s demands show its investigative blueprint to follow the money, map global relationships and determine whether malign interests are exploiting America’s tax-exempt system to obscure foreign influence across a network, not just within one organization.
Back on the streets, Chung, the organizing director for the People’s Forum, stage-managed the group’s protesters as they weaved across New York City’s streets, crossing over Union Square West, chanting, “One struggle, one fight!”
Soon after, BreakThrough posted the video clip, cropping Chung out of the shot.
Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan, Louis Casiano and Jesse Watson contributed to this report.
