Out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took right-wing demonization of the left to a new level on Tuesday when he compared the death of Charlie Kirk to the September 11 terrorist attacks, which stole the lives of almost 3,000 Americans.

While appearing on an episode of the late Kirk’s podcast, Bessent vowed to find the Osama bin Laden of the left, or “the ultimate culprit” responsible for the assassination, he explained. The administration is adamant that a highly organized and heavily funded organization called “antifa” is spearheading the anti-MAGA resistance and stoking violence across the country. No such organization exists.

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“Charlie’s death is like a domestic 9/11,” Bessent said. “Just as after 9/11, and Osama bin Laden, the ultimate culprit, was captured, we are operationalizing the Treasury, and we are going to track down who is responsible for this.” Bin Laden wasn’t “captured”; he was killed by Navy Seals in his Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound in 2011.

“We are going to, as they always say, follow the money,” he continued. “When you see these groups where all the signs match, they have hundreds of the same umbrellas that they’re using after they cause the mayhem, they have the same lasers that they’re using to blind our police force. How are they constructed? Because this takes a lot of money.”

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His remarks indicate he may be starting to take action on the president’s National Security Presidential Memorandum, issued in the wake of Kirk’s death, which essentially instructs federal law enforcement to investigate groups with progressive values that oppose the MAGA agenda, such as “extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The Treasury’s involvement comes from the memo’s order to “identify and disrupt financial networks that fund domestic terrorism and political violence.”

Sarah Saadian, senior vice president for public policy and campaigns at the National Council of Nonprofits, told Talking Points Memo that even when these investigations turn up nothing, they hurt nonprofits, which are forced to allocate resources away from their causes and toward defending themselves.

However, the mass layoffs the administration has conducted across the federal government have some questioning whether the Treasury even has the capacity to accomplish this investigation.

“The staff isn’t there,” said Marcus Owens, former IRS official. “The number of audits the IRS is conducting are approaching zero in the tax-exempt organizations area.”

On the podcast, Bessent pushed a common right-wing narrative that Republicans are marginalized despite the fact that they control all three branches of government.

“We’re determined not only to honor [Kirk], but to keep our country safe, and to ensure freedom of speech on both sides,” he said. “As conservatives, we can’t be afraid to go out and speak. I know people are canceling speeches, they’re having to bring down the size of the rallies.”

On The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller plainly stated that Bessent “has gone insane.”

“The dude is high on his power, high on his own supply,” Miller said, adding, “The idea that we go and look back to 9/11 and say we need to take that security state spy apparatus and use it to target and root out foes, there’s no comparison.”

“It is deeply alarming what the Treasury Secretary is planning as far as looking at the financing of left-wing groups here in this country,” Miller said.

“It is horrible what happened to Charlie Kirk… It is chilling… This young man that was radicalized… It’s sick what he did… It’s nothing like 9/11.”

“Saying that he’s gonna use the powers of the Treasury department to go after the bank records of people on the left under the auspices of some kind of war on domestic terror, like a War-on-Terror style effort to go after Americans who are political opponents of theirs, and the pretext for that is this assassination with this guy who there’s no evidence was involved in any of these groups, it’s lunacy. It is un-American. We should all be worried about this. Any American who believes in freedom and rights should be worried.”

Since Kirk’s death, the administration has been on a rampage to arrest members of antifa and label it a terrorist organization, despite the fact that it is not an organization at all. The word is used to describe a loose network of left-wing, anti-fascist activists that do not have any specific structure or leadership.

“They are organized,” Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed during a recent appearance on Fox News. “They are a criminal organization. And they’re very organized. You’re seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match, pre-bought, pre-put together.”

“They’re organized, and someone is funding it. We are going to get to the funding of antifa, we’re going to get to the root of antifa, and we are going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos.”

Many on social media mocked Bondi for continuing to believe antifa is a full-fledged organization at all, let alone that the proof is in signs that match. (Many also shared photos of MAGA rallies in which supporters all hold the same sign).

Bessent also mentioned matching signs as proof that antifa exists.

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