WASHINGTON—A network aligned with Marxist ideology and tied to a pro-Beijing millionaire received further scrutiny at a Feb. 10 hearing as lawmakers investigated the network’s potential Chinese communist ties.

The millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, is in China and has participated in at least one Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda forum in Shanghai that promoted the CCP’s agenda.

Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) chaired a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Feb. 10 in which he shone the spotlight on the network, which consists of more than a dozen groups that frequently collaborate on socialist causes or have monetary ties to one another.

Singham, he said, is “cozy—extremely cozy—with the Chinese Communist Party.” And the nonprofits in this network, according to Smith, have been acting as a vector for the CCP, exploiting their tax-exempt status to interfere with U.S. politics.

“The CCP is taking advantage of our tax-exempt sector to poison our dialogue and cause division in our political system,” Smith said. “That should alarm every single person, whether you are a Republican or whether you’re a Democrat.”

The night before the hearing, the congressman wrote to two of the groups, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental, asking them to turn over a list of documents for committee investigation. The requested documents include group members’ communications with Singham since 2017, a list of individuals and organizations that have donated more than $5,000 over the same period, and details on the projects and entities they have sponsored.

The committee found that Singham’s business ties are “far more entrenched in CCP-aligned networks” than public reports have suggested, Smith said. He noted several of the businessman’s China ventures, including one Chinese media entity, Shanghai Maku Cultural Communication, which has stated that its mission is to “tell China’s story well,” a slogan meaning to disseminate information that aligns with the CCP’s narratives.

Several groups in the network have taken a prominent role in organizing various protests against immigration enforcement and supporting pro-Palestinian causes. The violence that sometimes arose from these protests has attracted congressional attention, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in August 2024 citing the flag burning and the defacing of Columbus Circle during one protest outside Washington’s Union Station weeks before. The protest was organized by ANSWER Coalition to coincide with an address to Congress from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the hearing, Adam Sohn, CEO of social media threat intelligence analytic organization Narravance, referred to this protest and similar incidents as “expressions of the same structural failure.”

“This is not protected speech,” he said. “It is engineered subversion.”

(L–R) Capital Research Center president Scott Walter, Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland, Narravance co-founder and CEO Adam Sohn, Dubinsky Consulting founder Bruce Dubinsky, and Public Citizen Co-President Robert Weissman testify before the House Committee on Ways and Means on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 10, 2026. (Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times)

He described the coalition as a coordinated system, with some members training activists, some mobilizing protesters, and some handling messaging and media amplification.

“It is a repeatable system for paralyzing American infrastructure on demand, financed through U.S. tax law and aligned with a hostile foreign power,” he said.

Several Republicans at the hearing shared concerns about the network’s activities.

Although supportive of nonprofit and philanthropic initiatives, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), House Republican Conference vice chair, said he believes that it is important to close loopholes and ensure that “there is immense trust in the system” for a strong nonprofit sector to survive.

“We can’t have foreign actors taking advantage of the sector,” he told The Epoch Times. “Foreign money should not be funneling through nonprofits into our media, education, and especially not into our elections.”

He called for policies to “root out the bad actors without putting an undue burden on compliant organizations.”

Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), who also sits on the House Select Committee on the CCP, said that in the Singham network, he saw a “sophisticated, multi-layered flow of capital funds that originate in Singham and Shanghai, move through his private LLCs, and then are transferred to a donor-advised fund.”

“By the time the money reaches the end user, the original donor’s name has been stripped away three or four times,” he said, noting that the tax-exempt status of the nonprofits has “provided a layer of legitimacy to the entire operation.”

Bruce Dubinsky, a forensic fraud analyst, said he agrees that adding a legitimate financial institution or a large financial institution in the funding process lends an air of credibility.

“It’s almost impossible to unpack the layering that goes on in these structures,” he said at the hearing. “And the bad actors know this.”

“They know that if they’re jumping from place to place, jurisdiction to jurisdiction, things are running through different bank accounts, it loses the original identity,” he said. “That’s the whole purpose.”

For the IRS, which oversees the tax-exempt system, the root of the problem is the lack of actionable information, Dubinsky said.

On Form 990, Schedule B—a form that nonprofits fill out to report significant donors—does not have a check box for disclosing fiscal sponsorships, he said.

“It’s outdated,” he said. “It needs to be brought into line with what’s going on in today’s world.”

House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 10, 2026. (Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times)

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) likewise said more transparency is necessary.

“Nonprofit is a tax status,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s not a real picture of what the company is doing.”

The focus, he said, should be on “who’s making these investments and where’s the money.”

Smith has previously requested documents from The People’s Forum, a New York City-based organization in the network that has organized courses glorifying the Chinese regime and its socialist path.

The group did not comply with the request from members of Congress. Instead, it described the letter as a “desperate attempt” to “crush dissent,” and launched a fundraising campaign around getting Smith’s letter.

“[The] People’s Forum has not been forthcoming with the requested documents,” a source with knowledge of the investigation told The Epoch Times. The person said the Ways and Means Committee is “exploring additional action to compel the organization to comply, including subpoenas.”

BreakThrough News, Tricontinental, The People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, and the IRS did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated which state is represented by Sen. Ted Cruz. The Epoch Times regrets the error.