Hasan Piker staged a six-hour livestream under the banner “FEDS ARE AFTER ME.” and named Neville Roy Singham as the financier tied to a web of groups working with anti-American regimes, exposing a larger federal inquiry into aid, influence, and sanctioned-state connections.
On a widely watched stream, Piker played the victim before he did something a victim never does: he identified who funds the network he defends. He pointed to Neville Roy Singham, an American Marxist living in Shanghai, and tied the federal subpoenas to a broader puzzle that reaches beyond a single trip to Cuba.
Singham is described as a major backer of left-wing organizing, and federal scrutiny now traces money, meetings, and material flows into and out of Cuba. The Castro regime sits at the far end of that trail, and some observers say the regime is closer to falling now than it has been in sixty years.
Hasan Piker is no fringe streamer; he is a primary left-leaning influencer on Twitch and a conduit into national Democratic circles. He is the nephew of Cenk Uygur, a founder of Justice Democrats, and his audience feeds into the same progressive political ecosystem that elevated several high-profile members of Congress.
Piker openly admires communist regimes and has made statements on stream that underline that worldview. He held up Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book and called it “really, really special,” even reading the line praising Mao as “the greatest Marxist-Leninist in our era.” He has also described China as “a normal country” and “an example that we should learn from,” comments that sit uneasily next to documented human-rights abuses.
In March, Piker joined the “Nuestra América Convoy,” a supply run to Cuba organized with CodePink and framed by participants as humanitarian aid. The delegation’s stated mission was relief, but federal investigators are asking whether the trip amounted to unauthorized material support for a sanctioned government.
Human-rights groups report that Cuba’s security state has killed thousands, with more than nine thousand deaths cataloged and over three thousand executions by firing squad. The empty shelves and nonfunctional pharmacies Piker filmed reflect decades of misrule, not a short-term supply problem, and critics point to the regime itself as the source of those shortages.
Reports indicate the delegation stayed in a hotel owned or operated by the Cuban government, and federal agents have subpoenaed records and questioned contacts and cargo. That pattern pushed the Office of Foreign Assets Control to seek documents from Piker and from CodePink’s co-founder as part of a wider review.
A subpoena is not an indictment, but it signals investigation into potential sanctions violations. It is illegal to send money or goods to Cuba without a license, and Cuba was redesignated as a state sponsor of terrorism in 2025, reviving strict legal exposure under the Trading with the Enemy Act; willful violation can carry up to twenty years in prison.
As many as forty Americans are now linked to the inquiry, and the review touches roughly 145 nonprofits under scrutiny. Many Democrats call the subpoenas political intimidation, but critics on the right ask why leading progressive figures are openly cozying up to a brutal, sanctioned regime.
On his stream, Piker said the real target is “Singham and his operation,” running “from PSL to ANSWER Coalition to CodePink — like anything that he has ever financed,” and labeled Singham a “funding vehicle for a lot of political movements.” Those are not denials; they are a map of the money trail.
Singham reportedly sold a tech company for roughly $785 million and relocated to Shanghai, where he has spoken favorably about China’s global role. He has been linked to $278 million funneled into six American nonprofits since 2017 and sits at the center of what critics describe as a network of some two thousand groups that can amplify Beijing’s messaging.
Federal statutes require anyone acting on behalf of a foreign government to register as a foreign agent, and tax-exempt charities are forbidden from operating as political machines. Piker’s own description of these groups on stream reads more like a confession than a defense to those watching investigators map financial flows.
Mainstream coverage has tended to soften the story, calling the Cuba trip an “aid mission” and labeling the subpoenas “designed to intimidate and stifle criticism.” CodePink’s leadership has asked whether “saving the lives of babies is a crime,” an emotional line that does not erase legal restraints on dealing with sanctioned regimes.
Real humanitarian aid to Cuba can be lawful if routed under proper licenses, but moving supplies or money through a government Washington considers a terror sponsor is a different matter. Staying in regime-run facilities and coordinating with local authorities are precisely the behaviors sanctions law targets.
This issue reaches beyond individual streamers. Representative Pramila Jayapal made similar moves on a congressional trip, calling sanctions “cruel collective punishment” while acknowledging she had been “in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places … trying to figure out how to get oil there.” Critics slammed that posture as dangerously naive or worse, and even the White House dismissed some Democratic outreach as “sip margaritas with terrorists.”
The subpoenas are a starting point, not a conclusion; Piker himself pointed to Singham, the $278 million, the forty Americans, and the 145 nonprofits on his stream. Sending goods or funds to a state sponsor of terror is both a legal exposure and a moral problem, and many conservatives describe the behavior as at best useful idiocy for hostile regimes and at worst treasonous collaboration.
