California's progressive attorney general, Rob Bonta, quietly reinstated privileged charitable status to Arc of Justice, the serially tax-delinquent "charity" used by Code Pink benefactress Medea Benjamin to dole out millions to far-left activist groups, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal.
The charity's reinstatement came just 13 days after it first requested the action, which was estimated to take up to nine months, "despite a record showing years of delinquent filings, missing audits, a revoked state tax exemption, and unanswered questions" about more than $54 million in assets, according to a new investigation by the watchdog group Intelligent Action Network shared exclusively with the Free Beacon.
California's Franchise Tax Board first revoked Arc of Justice's tax-exempt status in April 2024, after the charity stopped filing and paying any required penalties, the Free Beacon exclusively reported earlier this year. This left a sizable cloud of mystery around the foundation's $54.6 million in total assets, which still remain unaccounted for. Benjamin's charity also did not file a federal tax return in fiscal years 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025—and reinstatement on the state level requires a petition that includes complete copies of the IRS Form 990-PF for each delinquent year. But Bonta's Registry of Charities and Fundraisers pushed through Arc of Justice's reinstatement in less than two weeks "without demanding a full accounting of what happened to its money during the period when it was suspended and later revoked," IAN found.
Bonta's preferential treatment of Benjamin's charity is even more remarkable given that one day before his registry approved reinstatement, "the Franchise Tax Board certified that Arc of Justice was not in good standing and was not tax-exempt in California," according to documents provided by IAN to the Free Beacon. While the Franchise Tax Board had informed Arc of Justice "that its application for reinstatement would take about nine months to process," Bonta's registry "did not wait for that process." Rather, it "reinstated Arc of Justice, even though the Registry's own rules provide for automatic suspension when a charity's Franchise Tax Board exemption has been revoked."
Bonta's office did not respond to multiple Free Beacon requests for comment on the decision. Bonta, who won a second full term in Tuesday's midterm elections, is also locked in a high-profile showdown with the Trump administration over efforts to stop non-citizens from voting. The attorney general has sought to position himself as one of the president's top legal foes.
The tangled web surrounding Arc of Justice and its finances leaves many unanswered questions about a foundation that has served as the financial backbone for a network of radical advocacy groups tied to Benjamin and her Code Pink cofounder, Jodie Evans. Evans is married to Neville Roy Singham, a Maoist American tech mogul who funds far-left causes from his base in Shanghai and who is currently the subject of a Justice Department criminal probe.
Arc of Justice had not filed with California's Registry of Charities and Fundraisers since 2018. Documents from that year and 2019 still "remain absent from the public file," according to IAN. The organization's 2021 federal tax return, which covers $17.3 million in revenue and $10.8 million in contributions, also "still does not appear in the IRS's public filing records."
Moreover, "in three of the Petition for Reinstatement's five years, Arc of Justice reported more than $2 million in revenue but no independent audit, which the Registry's own system flagged as required by California law. None of these issues prevented reinstatement."
"This wasn't oversight. It was a thirteen-day pass from Attorney General Bonta's office for a $54.6 million foundation that still has its state tax exemption revoked, still has no IRS record of its 2021 or 2025 federal returns, and still hasn't accounted for what it did with its money while the Registry barred it from spending it," Susan George, IAN CEO and cofounder, told the Free Beacon. "California's charity regulator waved it through without demanding an audit, an accounting, or a single serious answer. The only question left is why the hurry."
Arc of Justice only moved to rectify the delinquent tax filings after IAN began investigating its finances and discovered that "no public document establishes what has happened to" $51,445,599 in outstanding assets, "where it is held, or whether any of it has moved."
Arc of Justice, for its part, claimed its noncompliance stems from a mere "administrative misunderstanding," in which the group thought it had effectively moved operations to Florida. That explanation, however, is lacking: Every federal tax return the foundation filed from 2017 through 2024 named California as the state to which it reports. The "Petition for Reinstatement" additionally failed to disclose that just "one day after IAN first publicly raised concerns about Benjamin's foundation, its officers formed a new Florida corporation under the Arc of Justice name."
The Florida-based entity was founded on May 8 of this year—seven days before the federal tax filing deadline passed—with the same organizational name and same officers as its California incorporation. The address provided for the group, in Miami's downtrodden Little River neighborhood, is the same one "the California foundation used on its federal filings for years," IAN separately reported earlier this year. Google Street View images of the address, dating back to 2022, show a small, colorful shack adorned with peace signs and other cheerful imagery.
"Nothing in the public record shows that Bonta's Registry examined what role the Florida corporation was intended to play, whether it was operable, or whether any charitable assets had been transferred to it," according to IAN's findings.
But "most consequentially," IAN notes, is the apparent lack of oversight by Bonta's office: "The Registry of Charities and Fundraisers reinstated Arc of Justice without demanding a full accounting of what happened to its money during the period when it was suspended and later revoked. The Petition contains no 2025 financial statements, no accounting of assets following revocation, and no evidence addressing the $2.7 million in grants the foundation reported making in 2024, when the Registry's own notice shows it was already suspended."
In the face of these findings, Bonta's registry still concluded on September 9—13 days after the petition for reinstatement was received—that Arc of Justice posed "no threat to the public or to charitable assets." The letter was signed on Bonta's behalf by Registrar David Eller.
Eller himself described the reinstatement process in 2024 as lengthy and complex, telling the California state legislature that resolving delinquency status "involves a legal compliance review," and that complex cases spanning multiple years "create a lot of extra time to do the full review." Registry staff typically take anywhere from 30 to 90 days to review each renewal filing "for compliance and possible law violations."
But in Arc of Justice's case, "the foundation's petition came with five years of overdue renewal filings" and "was granted in 13 days," according to IAN.
"The Attorney General's office had broad authority to slow the process down, demand additional records, require audits, order an accounting reaching back years, restrict access to charitable assets, or impose meaningful conditions before reinstatement," IAN wrote. "It did none of those things. Instead, after years of noncompliance and five years of overdue renewal filings, Arc of Justice was restored to registered status in 13 days, while its California tax exemption remained revoked."
Perhaps even more startling is the competing compliance notices from Bonta's registry and California's Franchise Tax Board. Arc of Justice's reinstatement petition contained a Franchise Tax Board letter from Sept. 8, one day before Bonta's registry approved the action, certifying that the foundation "is not in good standing" and, therefore, not tax-exempt. As of Sept. 29, the Franchise Tax Board's own records still list the Foundation as "suspended" and "not exempt," though the registry's "order granting reinstatement does not mention" this finding. Arc of Justice's status with the Franchise Tax Board remains unchanged as of this writing.
"By its own records, it took the Registry seventeen months to issue a revocation notice, and thirteen days to undo the revocation," IAN found.
California's Franchise Tax Board told the Free Beacon that "information about whether an entity has taken steps to reinstate its tax-exemption is confidential taxpayer information." Due to that policy, "we are very limited in terms of the information we can share publicly on such entities." The agency was only able to direct the Free Beacon to its searchable "revoked exempt organization" webpage.
Benjamin and other Arc of Justice representatives did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment on the matter.
