House Republicans moved from letters to legal force this week, subpoenaing three left-wing nonprofits that refused for months to hand over a single document tied to a Shanghai-based megadonor's money.
The House Ways and Means Committee issued subpoenas dated July 21 to the People's Forum, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, three nonprofits the committee says received more than $39 million linked to Neville Roy Singham, a former tech mogul who now lives in Shanghai. Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., had been requesting documents from the groups since last year. None turned over a single responsive record. That stonewalling is what triggered Monday's subpoenas.
Singham built his fortune founding ThoughtWorks, a software consulting firm he later sold for a reported $785 million. He has since relocated to Shanghai, where Smith says he "maintains business ties with companies and individuals linked to the CCP, works with and physically alongside a foreign propaganda company, and attends CCP forums on how to promote the party abroad." The committee alleges Singham routed money through shell companies and donor-advised funds before it landed in the accounts of American tax-exempt nonprofits. The People's Forum, a Manhattan activist hub, alone took in more than $20 million from Singham and his wife between 2017 and 2022, according to the committee's findings. BreakThrough News and Tricontinental, which describes its mission as advancing "national liberation Marxism," round out the network under subpoena.
None of that money is illegal simply because a donor lives overseas. The problem, as Smith frames it, is that organizations enjoying American tax-exempt status may be functioning as a domestic amplifier for Chinese Communist Party messaging while stiffing a congressional oversight request for more than a year. Tax-exempt status is a privilege, not a right, and it comes with an obligation to answer when Congress asks where the money came from.
A federal grand jury is already circling
The Ways and Means subpoenas do not stand alone. A federal grand jury empaneled in the Southern District of New York has been issuing its own subpoenas for bank records and financial documents tied to Singham's network, a probe authorized by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and led by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. Prosecutors are examining roughly $278 million that moved from Shanghai through a Goldman Sachs donor-advised fund and two now-defunct shell corporations into American nonprofits and media operations, according to Fox News. Investigators are weighing whether Singham, the funded groups, or their leaders committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering or tax crimes. The inquiry reportedly began as a Foreign Agents Registration Act matter and has since widened into a criminal tax investigation.
That means the same three organizations are now facing pressure from two directions at once: a House committee that can hold them in contempt and refer noncompliance to the Justice Department, and a Manhattan grand jury with subpoena power already probing the underlying money. Smith has said the Trump administration's investigation "aligns with" the committee's own oversight, a rare instance of the legislative and executive branches converging on the same target from separate legal footings.
The People's Forum has hosted events with sitting Democratic officials and describes itself as a hub for the American left, giving the Singham money trail a reach beyond three obscure nonprofits. Smith's committee first flagged the network publicly last September, calling the People's Forum a likely "CCP-funded propaganda arm operating under tax-exempt status." Ten months of stonewalling later, subpoenas are the result.
None of the three groups has issued a public response to the subpoenas as of this writing. PRN has sought comment from the People's Forum, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental.
Refusing a subpoena carries real consequences: contempt of Congress referrals, and potentially a criminal one from the Justice Department that is already circling the same money. The groups now have a deadline to comply. Whether they do, or whether this becomes the next fight over congressional enforcement power, is the next thing to watch.
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