House intel chief warns foreign actors are conspiring with Americans to ‘sow discord’ inside U.S.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Ark., is pressing for major counterintelligence reforms across spy agencies, starkly warning that foreign actors are conspiring with Americans to destabilize and divide the United States.

“I think there is a whole network of both state and non-state actors that bring that to bear here in the United States, that is to exploit any kind of political divide that might exist, or schisms that may exist, even within a political party,” Crawford told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview. 

“So they kind of help sow discord. We've seen malign influence from state actors that include China and Russia and Iran. But then there's also the non-state actors that can be doing the bidding of a nation state," he said.

“For example, what if you had, let's say Russia was essentially paying for cyberattacks against certain targets, or that China might be doing the same thing,” he added. “China might be mobilizing the diaspora that lives here in the United States, maybe United States citizens, but they have this underlying allegiance to the mother country and China seeks to exploit that.”

A "more robust effort" on counterintelligence

The growing collaboration of foreign malign influences and those on U.S. soil, Crawford said, makes pressing counterintelligence reforms an urgent matter of national security. He singled out FBI Director Kash Patel for doing a “tremendous job” inside the intelligence community in putting forward new thinking and structures and implored other agencies to follow suit.

“We need to know about it. We need to be in a position to intercept those kinds of things and protect our citizens here at home. And we can, we can broaden our scope and bring in a lot of expertise that provides a good level of augmentation to what the FBI is already doing,” Crawford said during an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show.

“What we know is that we just need to adopt, in my opinion, a whole government approach across the enterprise of the IC and law enforcement. We bring that together, and we think we can, we can achieve a much better, more robust effort on counterintelligence,” he added.

Crawford cited a recent episode involving Chinese figures on U.S. soil in Michigan as an example of the sort of changing approach foreign adversaries are taking.

“You know the threats with regard to the Michigan military base, where you had some Chinese property owners adjacent to a military installation,” he explained. “And we saw another issue where the US Secret Service intercepted an attempt to hack phone systems at the UN General Assembly, and there's a there's a whole host of other issues where the FBI has really stepped up and made those apprehensions."

“But where we think we can help that is in the non-apprehension, the non-arrest state of counterintelligence. That is, you know, sometimes we have agencies that are really, really good at counter intelligence,” he said. “They don't have the necessary law enforcement authority. But they're really good at exploiting networks and maybe even turning some assets, maybe doing some better work that helps protect Americans, American assets, military secrets, things of this nature. And that also gives us a better insight into how those nations are positioned here at home, and that might not necessarily end up in an arrest. It might help us to exploit an existing network and give us better insights.”

Operationalizing the Treasury Department

Crawford’s comments come as the Treasury Department, IRS and FBI have stepped up operations to track foreign influence in nonprofits that are using the U.S. tax code and tax exemptions to fund and foment violence and unrest on U.S. soil.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent touted the effort during a recent episode of the late Charlie Kirk’s podcast.

“Charlie’s death is like a domestic 9/11,” Bessent said. “Just as after 9/11, and Osama bin Laden, the ultimate culprit, was captured, we are operationalizing the Treasury, and we are going to track down who is responsible for this. We don’t know how much of the support is coming in from overseas, how much is being supported by U.S. nonprofits,” he said. “This is mission-critical for us now.”

Patel: "Mapping out the money"

Patel, the FBI boss, has made rapid progress in tracking the financing and command structures of anarchist groups like Antifa that have fomented unrest in American cities, attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, rounding up illegal immigrants and antisemitic movements on college campuses. Patel told Just the News last month that there are indications that some support may come from overseas enemies and U.S. nonprofit groups that have tax exemptions from the IRS.

"Look, the thing I can tell you is that money doesn't lie, and the thing we're doing at the FBI is following the money," Patel explained. "And thanks to President Trump, we now have Antifa designated, rightfully so, as a domestic terror organization. And we have had multiple investigations going on."

Patel said those probes are "mapping out the money, and we are using social media and the influencers that the President had here just this last week, because they're the ones on the ground, getting us ground level intelligence, because law enforcement isn't able to enter these spaces, and these people are brave enough to do it."