Former US President Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday night, which has renewed interest in the George Soros-backed district attorney who oversaw the probe into Trump’s alleged breaches of state campaign finance rules.
After his indictment as a result of District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump’s claimed 2016 hush money transactions to adult film star Stormy Daniels, the former president is anticipated to turn himself in to Bragg’s office early the next week.
According to a Fox News report, George Soros donated $1 million to the ‘Color of Change PAC’ a civil rights advocacy organisation in the US in May 2021, and the PAC then spent heavily to support Bragg’s candidacy. Moreover, Soros’ daughter Jennifer Allan Soros and son Jonathan Soros made contributions to Bragg’s campaign directly.
George Soros gave Alvin Bragg $1 million for his DA campaign. Now Bragg could arrest Trump by inflating a misdemeanor while he lets violent criminals walk and ravage NYC.
— Bradley Devlin (@bradleydevlin) March 18, 2023
Forget about equal protection and the rule of law. You live in a third-world country. https://t.co/d9oHWU8SuD
According to state records, Jonathan Soros wrote a $10,000 cheque to the now-district attorney’s bank account on April 26, 2021. Jennifer Allan Soros donated a $10,000 donation to the campaign three days later, on April 29. Reports mention that the pair was among his committee’s greatest donors, even though other people made more direct financial contributions.
The donations were particularly unusual for the two since they rarely contribute to district attorney races, although having contributed to other political campaigns and issue organisations in New York. On the other side, George Soros has spent millions of dollars recently to influence various prosecutor races.
Whitney Tymas, Soros’ longstanding treasurer, typically sets up pop-up political action committees (PAC) in the areas where he targets the elections for his district attorney programme. The financier funds the PACs after they are established, and they often spend hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting his preferred contenders. PACs usually dissolve following the elections.
This didn’t happen in the case of Bragg. Instead, Soros gave $1 million to the Color of Change PAC in May 2021, and the PAC later spent money supporting Bragg’s campaign. The timing of the funds suggests that they supported the initiatives.
Former US President Donald Trump last week attacked the DA and stated that he was a ‘Soros backed animal’. “It was all made up by a convicted nut job with zero credibility, who has been disputed by highly respected professionals at every turn. Bragg refuses to stop despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He is a Soros backed animal who just doesn’t care about right or wrong no matter how many people are hurt,” he was quoted as saying on Truth Social.
However, several news portals like the CNBC, the New York Times have claimed that the ties between the DA Alvin Bragg and financer George Soros are not as close as portrayed by the Republicans. “The connections between Soros and Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, are real but overstated,” states the report by New York Times.
The prominent case is a $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels by Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen days before the 2016 election in return for her silence on an alleged affair with Trump. But, Trump has refuted a relationship with Daniels.
Notably, George Soros, a Hungarian-American billionaire recently targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government of backing Adani, making it clear that he intends to target Modi politically. India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar then said that Soros was rich, opinionated, and dangerous and that he funded organisations to bring down governments he did not like.
What Exactly Did Trump Say About Soros?
In a recent all-caps Truth Social post, the ex-POTUS lashed out at Bragg for being "FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS." "HE IS A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL WHO JUST DOESN'T CARE ABOUT RIGHT OR WRONG NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HURT," Trump e-shouted.
The 45th US president also argued that “Alvin Bragg received in EXCESS OF ONE MILLION DOLLARS from the Radical Left Enemy of ‘TRUMP,’ George Soros.”
Trump was echoed by Republican Senator J.D. Vance, who tweeted that Bragg "is bought by George Soros." According to Vance, Bragg “allows violent criminals to walk the streets of New York City, but will prosecute the likely Republican nominee (and former president) on a baseless misdemeanor charge."
The same tone was struck by Mark Dankof, a San-Antonio resident, former US Senate candidate and investigative journalist, who told Sputnik that “the Bragg connection to George Soros is self-explanatory.”
'I Don't Know Him'
The 92-year-old billionaire, who topped the list of individual political donors for 2021-2022, contributing more than $128.4 million to Democrats (and $0 to Republicans), was rather quick to distance himself from Bragg following Trump's claims.
"As for Alvin Bragg, as a matter of fact I did not contribute to his campaign and I don't know him," Soros told a US media outlet.
"I think some on the right would rather focus on far-fetched conspiracy theories than on the serious charges against the former president," Soros claimed.
"I think some on the right would rather focus on far-fetched conspiracy theories than on the serious charges against the former president," Soros claimed. But the story is not as simple as it may seem at first glance.
Soros and Color of Change PAC
Most of the GOP members’ criticism of Bragg pertains to support he received from the political action committee (PAC) Color of Change, a "racial justice" non-profit group, which tries to influence government and corporate policy across the US. While campaigning to become the next Manhattan DA ahead of his nomination in 2021, Bragg received in May of that year more than $1 million in support from the Color of Change PAC, which receives funding from Soros.
Soros' Support of DAs
Bragg is reportedly merely one of at least 75 district attorneys Soros has supported in recent years as part of his efforts "to reshape American society in his liberal vision."
Soros' Open Society Foundations have pumped millions of dollars into liberal DAs, either with direct donations or those that were funneled through political action committees. The apparent goal was to effectively buy elections to install prosecutors who support the billionaire’s leftist agenda.
As for Soros himself, many perceive him as a financier who has made billions of dollars through investments and currency speculation, and a "philanthropist" who seeks to spread his vision of a liberal "open society" internationally.
On Trump, the billionaire minced no words in February, when he told the 2023 Munich Security Conference that the former US president had turned into a "pitiful figure" and could lose the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Soros enjoys enormous influence in Europe with only a handful of countries resisting his influence, Hungary and its Prime Minister Viktor Orban being the first among them.
Over the years, the relationship between Orban and Soros has been fraught with mutual hostility, if not outright hatred. Once fellow-travellers in their struggle against the country's communist regime, two Hungarian natives have grown apart over the years, with Soros financing a wide range of left-wing causes, such as unrestrained immigration and libertine social mores, which according to Orban, serve to undermine the country's national tradition and the Christian way of life.
Soros is also disliked by some in Asia. The 1997 Southeast Asia financial crisis saw Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accuse the billionaire of ruining Malaysia's economy with "massive currency speculation."
The 92-year-old is also known for signaling his opposition to the US Supreme Court decision last year to roll back abortion rights nationally, overturning a near-50-year precedent.
"The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn #RoeVWade ends federal protections for abortion, diminishes human rights, and greatly threatens reproductive care. We have invested in reproductive rights organizations that are fighting back at this moment," the billionaire tweeted at the time.
Soros is also notoriously known as "the Man Who Broke the Bank of England", a nickname that is related to the UK Black Wednesday currency crisis in 1992, when Soros, in one night, borrowed and sold $10 billion worth of the British pound, putting Britain’s Central Bank in distress.
What is Color of Change?
The non-profit civil rights organization was formed in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in order to use online resources to strengthen the political voice of African Americans.
Proclaiming itself "the nation’s largest online racial justice organization," the Color of Change PAC says that it "moves decision-makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America."
