Medea Benjamin spent 20 years building a $51 million charity to bankroll Code Pink's anti-American crusades.
California just ordered it to cease all operations – and nobody knows where the money went.
What she did seven days before the federal tax deadline is the question every federal prosecutor in Manhattan wants answered.
Code Pink and Arc of Justice: $51 Million in Charitable Assets Has Gone Dark
Arc of Justice – the California nonprofit Benjamin founded in 2002 as her personal slush fund for far-left causes – stopped filing tax returns after 2022.
That alone should have triggered automatic revocation of its federal tax-exempt status under IRS rules.
It didn't.
California moved first. The state attorney general pulled Arc of Justice's charitable registration in January 2025. From that point, the foundation needed the attorney general's written approval before it could spend a dollar.
The foundation's response was silence.
Eighteen months passed without an accounting, without filings, without a single explanation for $51,445,599 in reported assets.
In June, California escalated. A warning letter from the California Department of Justice ordered Arc of Justice to cease "any activity in California for which registration is required … including holding or soliciting assets for charitable purposes."
The letter warned board members they could be held personally liable for any unauthorized distributions.
On August 3, the California Franchise Tax Board confirmed Arc of Justice "is not in good standing" and is no longer certified as tax-exempt. The Secretary of State lists the organization as suspended.
Watchdog group Intelligent Advocacy Network – which shared its investigation exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon – found that "no public document establishes what has happened to the money, where it is held, or whether any of it has moved."
"Arc of Justice went completely dark in 2022," IAN CEO Susan George told the Free Beacon. California revoked its exemption and froze its assets. "Nobody outside the foundation can say where the money is or what has happened to it," George added.
The self-dealing was documented. While Benjamin ran Arc of Justice as its president, she simultaneously held the position of Code Pink's treasurer. Between 2009 and 2022, the foundation routed $2,214,200 to Code Pink. Another $1,897,950 went to Global Exchange, a separate organization Benjamin also cofounded. Federal law prohibits this kind of arrangement between a private foundation and its own managers.
Four tax returns – for fiscal years 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025 – were never filed. Federal law mandates automatic loss of tax-exempt status after three consecutive missed returns. Arc of Justice crossed that line in May. The IRS has taken no action.
Neville Roy Singham, Dark Money, and the Code Pink FARA Investigation
On May 8 of this year – seven days before the federal tax filing deadline – someone incorporated a Florida nonprofit called Arc of Justice with matching name and officers, listing the Miami address the California foundation had used on federal filings for years.
The address is a small shack decorated with peace signs in Miami's Little River neighborhood.
Sam Lyman, former senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, told the Free Beacon: "For years, Neville Singham and his associates have been playing financial shell games across a series of U.S.-based nonprofits. The goal is to fund extremist causes that undermine American sovereignty by using the 501(c)(3) legal structure as a shield. But the scheme is starting to unravel, and Medea Benjamin's Arc of Justice is the latest example."
Singham is Arc of Justice cofounder Jodie Evans' husband. He operates from Shanghai, and a federal grand jury in Manhattan is now investigating him for alleged wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is running the probe. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche authorized it.
Singham has funneled at least $285 million from Shanghai through shell corporations into far-left American nonprofits, media outlets, and activist groups since 2017.
His money didn't just fund Code Pink – it changed what Code Pink said about China. Before 2017, Evans publicly demanded that China stop repressing women's rights defenders. Three years after Singham's cash started flowing, Code Pink launched its "China Is Not Our Enemy" campaign and began defending Beijing's treatment of Uyghur Muslims as legitimate counterterrorism.
Beijing paid for that reversal.
Senator Tom Cotton wrote to former Attorney General Pam Bondi in November 2025 demanding a FARA investigation.
Code Pink, Cotton wrote, "has received funding from groups aligned with the Communist Chinese government and partnered with designated foreign terror organizations."
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith have separately demanded documents and pressed the DOJ to force FARA registration.
Medea Benjamin did not respond to requests for comment. Her out-of-office message said she would be out of the country through August 15.
Fifty-one million dollars is missing. The woman who controlled it is unreachable. And somewhere in Miami, a shack covered in peace signs is the listed address of a brand-new nonprofit with the same name, same officers, and the same unresolved questions federal prosecutors in Manhattan are now being paid to answer.
Sources:
- Adam Kredo, "Code Pink Founder Medea Benjamin's Radical 'Charity' Ordered To Cease Operations," Washington Free Beacon, August 10, 2026.
- "DOJ Launches Grand Jury Probe Into Marxist Mogul Neville Roy Singham's Funding of Leftist Groups," Fox News, June 29, 2026.
- Tom Cotton, "Cotton to Bondi: Investigate Code Pink," Senate Judiciary Press Release, November 7, 2025.
- "Grassley Takes Aim at Radical Activist Groups' Foreign Ties," Senate Judiciary Committee Press Release.
- "Chairman Smith: Trump Administration Investigation into Shanghai Singham Network Aligns with Committee Oversight," Ways and Means Committee, June 30, 2026.
