Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon violated myriad federal and state laws, including federal wire fraud laws, in the operation of her black power-themed Cafe Resistance bookstore, an ethics watchdog alleged in a complaint filed Tuesday. The alleged violations stem from Nixon's failure to report to the IRS what happened to the $270,000 in charitable funds she raised in 2024, ostensibly to support the shop.
The complaint from the National Legal and Policy Center, filed with six federal and state agencies, says that "Ms. Nixon and any of her accomplices should be criminally prosecuted for committing this fraudulent solicitation scheme."
Nixon, a dues-paying Democratic Socialist, raised $270,000 for her charity, the Moxie Group Inc., through fundraising solicitations in 2024, claiming it would support the operation of her Cafe Resistance bookstore in Jacksonville. But when Nixon opened the shop later that year, she placed it under the control of her for-profit LLC, which is also called the Moxie Group. Nixon's personal income has since skyrocketed at the same time as her, but whatever happened to the charitable haul she raised in 2024 is now a mystery. Nixon reported to a Florida agency that her charity spent $214,000 on unexplained "other" expenses. The IRS requires far more robust financial reporting from charities, but Nixon still hasn't filed a Form 990 tax return for her charity to the feds, despite the reporting deadline for 2024 expiring nearly a year ago, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Nixon now claims she dissolved the charity in December 2025, but records reported by the Free Beacon show she continued accepting donations and offering receipts for tax deductions to donors through late September, long after she secured the Florida Democratic Senate nomination. By definition, accepting charitable donations for a dissolved charity "constitutes felony wire fraud under federal law and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act," according to the complaint filed Tuesday by the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog group.
"Angie Nixon should be criminally prosecuted for wire fraud for soliciting charitable contributions online during 2026 for her nonprofit charity that was dissolved in December 2025," said National Legal and Policy Center attorney Paul Kamenar. "The Department of Justice and the Attorney General of Florida should subpoena the bank records of her personal bank account, her charity, her for-profit bookstore, and her campaign committee to find out what happened to some $200,000 in contributions that are unaccounted for."
The watchdog group, which previously filed a criminal referral against Nixon for her failure to disclose her $14,000 IRS tax debt to the IRS in her Senate financial disclosure, filed its complaint Tuesday to the IRS, the Federal Election Commission, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Florida John Heekin, Florida attorney general James Uthmeier, and the Florida Department of Agriculture, which regulates charities in the state.
Cafe Resistance, a squat building in a shopping mall parking lot in a downtrodden part of Jacksonville, became nationally known after the Free Beacon visited the establishment and photographed an interior shrine to black people convicted of murdering cops and other grave crimes. The cafe, whose front door is adorned with a sign of a Black Panther clenched fist, was staffed by volunteers when the Free Beacon stopped by.
Nixon's net worth has fluctuated wildly throughout the past several years. As a Florida state lawmaker, she reported a negative net worth of $100,752 in 2022, a positive net worth of $12,852 in 2023, and a negative net worth of $256,000 in 2024, as her charity raked in donations.
And then in 2025, after her charity raked in $270,000 the prior year, Nixon disclosed she was back at a break-even net worth after having raked in at least $270,000 from her jobs and investments, including $90,000 from an obscure company called Building Blocks Strategies run by a Washington, D.C.-based anti-ICE activist who's a business partner of Nixon's campaign treasurer, the Free Beacon reported. Nixon's campaign does not pay her a salary, a practice which is legal but rare.
Several legal and tax experts told the Free Beacon in September that Nixon's dealings with her charity raise the question of whether she exploited it to funnel funds to her personal LLC or herself in violation of nonprofit laws.
"There are several red flags here," former IRS nonprofit law specialist Patrick Sternal told the Free Beacon. "The intermingling of the bookstore/café with the charity is itself problematic. This looks like private inurement insofar as charitable funds seem to be flowing to the LLC and ultimately to Nixon, who is an officer and director of the charity. Private inurement is absolutely prohibited under 501(c)(3)."
Inurement is a legal term for when an insider improperly benefits from a nonprofit organization's assets. In addition to civil penalties, it can lead to criminal embezzlement charges.
The Florida Department of Agriculture told the Free Beacon in late September that it launched its own investigation into whether Nixon's charity solicited charitable solicitations with an expired license.
The National Legal and Policy Center also alleged in its complaint that Nixon is violating federal election laws by allowing Cafe Resistance to provide her Senate campaign with unfettered access throughout 2026 to host campaign rallies, phone banks, and fundraising events at the shop, all at no cost to the campaign. With few exceptions that don't appear to apply to Nixon's business entities, federal laws prohibit corporations and charities from donating free services to political campaigns.
The Nixon campaign did not return a request for comment.
