Grassroots Money Laundering: How Zohran Mamdani Illegally Weaponized Charities to Win NYC’s Mayoral Primary
What if the “grassroots” political movements reshaping American cities aren’t grassroots at all, but rather illegal tax-exempt charity funded operations disguised as community activism?
In his July 2025 article, How Elite Money Flows Through Working Families Party Network, forensic investigator Sam Antar exposes a hidden financial web he calls “grassroots laundering”. His case study: the rise of Zohran Mamdani in New York City politics.
What Antar uncovered is a political machine powered not by working-class donations, but by a $2+ billion network of tax-exempt nonprofits that illegally converts taxpayer money and billionaire philanthropy into political power.
Antar reinforced these findings with extensive new documentation in Why the IRS Must Investigate the Tax-Exempt Syndicate that Weaponized Mamdani’s Campaign.
In this report, he demonstrates how the nonprofits network systematically blurs the line between charity and politics, and undermines the very foundations of campaign finance law with a reoccurring four-step money laundering cycle.
Here is how tax-deductible charitable donations and government grants are illegally converted into leftist political activity, according to Antar:
- Tax-Deductible Funding: Billionaires and major donors donate to 501(c)(3) charities, receiving tax breaks. Government grants then add hundreds of millions more.
- Transfers: These charities then quietly shift money to their 501(c)(4) political affiliates, often sharing staff and infrastructure as well.
- Political Spending: The 501(c)(4)s then funnel money into PACs and Super PACs, funding political campaigns like Zohran Mamdani’s.
- Feedback Loop: Once elected, Democrat officials expand government funding to the very charities that helped elect them, perpetuating the cycle.
At the center of Mamdani’s scheme, Antar writes, is a charitable façade led by nonprofits like Make the Road New York, a 501(c)(3) organization, which received $16.1 million in taxpayer grants, over half its revenue, in 2023.
By law, such groups are barred from engaging in partisan politics. Yet, as Antar shows, resources then flowed from Make the Road New York directly into its political sibling, Make the Road Action, a 501(c)(4), which can legally engage in political activity under the (c)(4) banner. This seamless pipeline between supposedly independent entities is at the heart of the money laundering scheme.
For example, on June 11, 2025 Make the Road Action (c)(4) contributed $45,697.14 to the Working Families Party (WFP) National PAC. That same day, the PAC reported an “in-kind” expenditure for the identical amount, labeled as “Phone Bank Services.” The statistical likelihood of this exact amount being coincidental is so small that Antar calls it a near certainty of illegal coordination.
Further, during Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign, two supposedly independent PACs, including the WFP National PAC and “New Yorkers for Lower Costs”, spent $2,022,238 boosting his candidacy, more than the Mamdani campaign’s own fundraising of $1,708,494. Out-of-state tech billionaires provided over 70% of one PAC’s funding.
That’s how coordinated expenditures and same-day circular transactions were able to masquerade as “grassroots support” for Mamdani from ordinary New Yorkers.
Antar traces all these operations across a sprawling constellation of organizations: the Working Families Organization, the Center for Popular Democracy, the Tides Foundation, and George Soros’s powerful Open Society empire.
Together, these groups distribute over $693 million annually. The Tides Foundation (501(c)(3)) sent $4.55 million to the Working Families Organization, while its political arm, Tides Advocacy (501(c)(4)), contributed $295,173.
Antar cites an independent audit by Deloitte and Withum who confirmed that these groups shared staff, payroll systems, and even office space, shattering the legal independence required for tax-exempt status. Antar concludes these groups function as a single political machine under the guise of tax-exempt charities.
The corruption was not only financial, but also personnel-based. Tascha Van Auken, a senior WFP operative, became Mamdani’s 2025 campaign Field Director with nearly $80,000 in payments. Executives like Theodoro Oshiro and Daniel Altschuler drew salaries from both charitable and political entities while simultaneously holding political posts in 501(c)(3) organizations.
“The entire leftist campaign infrastructure is illegal under the tax code,” Antar says.
Meanwhile, regulators failed to police these abuses. A New York Campaign Finance Board member had been a 15-year WFP veteran, while a senior staffer openly declared support for Mamdani’s campaign, rendering oversight meaningless.
Antar’s findings expose Mamdani’s movement not as a grassroots uprising at all, but rather as a carefully engineered illusion to fool voters – a campaign built upon deception rather than democracy. Mamdani simply weaponized charitable organizations, taxpayer dollars, and billionaire money to evade campaign finance laws while manufacturing the appearance of popular support.
Antar warns, “This is not just about campaign finance violations – it’s about the erosion of public trust when democratic narratives are scripted by hidden elite machinery and sold as the people’s will.”
Accordingly, Antar believes a comprehensive IRS investigation is needed, and reports he has filed a whistleblower complaint with the IRS. Thanks to Sam Antar, the Mamdani machine may soon face scrutiny as one of the most brazen political funding scandals in New York City’s modern history.
Joel Gilbert is a Los Angeles-based film producer and president of Highway 61 Entertainment. He is the producer of the new film Roseanne Barr Is America. He is also the producer of the films: Dreams from My Real Father and There’s No Place Like Utopia and many other films on American politics. Gilbert is on Twitter: @JoelSGilbert.
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