Tucker Carlson Asks Journalist Whether Anyone Was Charged for Funding Antifa

Tucker Carlson asked journalist Andy Ngo whether anyone has been charged with funding Antifa. On The Tucker Carlson Show, Carlson said he was surprised the government still had not worked out who pays for the movement. Ngo, author of a new book on the Zizians cult, defended the administration's record.

The exchange came near the end of a long interview about the book. Carlson framed his complaint as surprise rather than an attack on President Donald Trump. Ngo answered it point by point.

"I am surprised that two years into this administration, we still haven't seen a systematic attempt to understand what Antifa is and who pays for it. Where's that?" Carlson said.

"I actually think the administration has done a good job," Ngo replied.

Tucker Carlson Asks About Antifa Funding Charges

Carlson then put the question directly: "Has anyone been charged for sending money to Antifa?" He compared that with how the government treats donors to Middle Eastern militant groups. "Because if I gave money to Hamas or Hezbollah, I'd get a FBI raid at my house," he said.

Ngo said the law makes that harder. Antifa, he said, is a movement and an ideology as well as a set of organizations, groups and cells. He compared it to giving to a neo-Nazi cause, which by itself is not a crime, though donating to a group involved in criminal activity can be prosecuted.

Carlson was not persuaded. "Well, but if you designated, I mean, I think the designation is the point," he said.

Ngo answered that "most of the groups in the American context are American, and they operate entirely domestically." They may read material from European groups, he said, but money and weapons are not moving across borders.

The Legal Gap Ngo Described

Carlson cannot get what he is asking for under current law. The statute that reaches Hamas and Hezbollah donors, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, bans material support only to designated foreign terrorist organizations. No law provides for designating a domestic group.

"There is no framework to designate an organization as a domestic terrorist organization," Faiza Patel, director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Michigan Public. Tom Brzozowski, a former Justice Department counsel for domestic terrorism, told the station that sending a $20 gift card to a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization could bring up to 20 years in jail, while the same $20 gift card sent to a local KKK chapter "would be subject to no criminal sanction whatsoever."

Prosecutors have used a different provision instead. Section 2339A covers support for specific violent acts rather than for a named group. That means prosecutors have to show a defendant knew the support would be used for particular crimes, Lawfare senior editor Eric Columbus wrote.

What the Trump Administration Has Done on Antifa

Ngo listed the government's actions. Trump signed an order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization on September 22, 2025. Ngo said himself that the order was "just a statement." He said the State Department had since designated European Antifa groups as foreign terrorist organizations, which makes providing support to them a prosecutable crime.

Ngo's main example was the July 4 shooting at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. (Ngo dated it to 2024; the attack happened in 2025.) His count of 16 defendants matches the Justice Department's figure. Seven pleaded guilty and nine went to trial. On March 13, a jury convicted eight of the nine on terrorism-related charges and the ninth on document-concealment counts.

The department said the eight defendants it sentenced in June received a combined 450 years. Cell leader Benjamin Song got 100 years. The department called it the first sentencing of Antifa-affiliated defendants since the 2025 designation.

Ngo called it the first Antifa federal prosecution and convictions "in US history," which drew disbelief from Carlson. "After everything, all those people killed in 2020, this was the first time," Carlson said.

Ngo also pointed to ongoing federal prosecutions in Minnesota, saying 15 people had been federally prosecuted over attacks on federal agents earlier this year.

Ngo did not name any prosecutions specifically for funding Antifa.

What Comes Next

Ngo said money for the movement "comes really through people who donate to what they call mutual aid causes," including legal defense funds. He described the donors as both rich individuals and large groups of people giving small amounts. Even so, he called dismantling Antifa "a Sisyphean task for the federal government."

"So the federal government has done a lot," Ngo said. "I think, of course, they can always do more."