The legendary financier is accused by Donald Trump and his backers of financing the election campaign of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Bragg’s investigation, related to a hush money payment, led to Trump’s impeachment, the first for a former president.
George Soros is used to being the target of extremists of all stripes.
The legendary financier feeds the fantasies of anti-globalization activists, who mistakenly see his hand behind the global transformation of commerce and technology.
Conservatives see him behind everything dysfunctional and have made him the face of threats to their values. Soros is also the subject of many right-wing conspiracy theories: these theories paint him as the face of a global elite that wants to control the world.
Most of these theories are based on the fact that the legendary investor is a big donor to the Democratic Party and, through his Open Society Foundations, helps many non-governmental organizations around the world.
The Open Society Foundations (OSF) funds many progressive causes and NGOs around the world. OSF, a network of entities with interconnected operations around the world, has set itself the goal of promoting democracy, human rights and press freedom. It is one of the richest foundations in the world, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which allocates billions to promote public health and development.
Soros and Bragg
Soros rarely responds to conspiracy theorists. But for several days now, he has been the target of former Republican President Donald Trump, who sees his influence behind his legal setbacks in New York.
Trump was indicted last week by a New York grand jury in connection with alleged hush money payments he made before the 2016 presidential election to an adult film star with whom he allegedly had an affair. Trump has denied making secret payments or having an affair with an adult film star.
However, the indictment has yet to be unsealed, so any charges against Trump were unknown at this writing. It would be the first time that a former president has been charged in a criminal case. He has denied the accusations.
Trump, 76, will appear before a judge on April 4, when the charges against him will be read out in full during the hearing, which is scheduled to take place at the Manhattan Criminal Court building around 2:15 p.m. ET.
“I will be leaving Mar-a-Lago Monday at 12 noon, heading to Trump Tower in New York,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social social media platform.
Meanwhile, Trump, who is running for the 2024 presidential election, has deployed a strategy of hard-hitting Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, who inherited the year-old Trump investigation when he took office in January 2022. It portrays him as a pawn of Soros.
“On Thursday, left-wing Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg fabricated a false indictment against President Donald J. Trump. It is an unprecedented political persecution of the 45th President of the United States and a flagrant attempt to interfere in the 2024 election,” the Trump campaign said. he wrote to his followers on April 2.
He added that “the American people and Republican primary voters in particular are outraged by the use of weapons of our justice system by the George Soros-appointed and funded Manhattan district attorney against a completely innocent person and the leading Republican candidate for president.
In another email sent the same day to raise money, the former president continues to associate Bragg with Soros and portrays the accusation as being engineered by the financier.
“The DA Soros’ false accusation, of which I am completely innocent, is not only completely un-American, but so are the Democrats who cheer and gloat over the FALL of our Republic,” Trump alleged.
In an email the day before, he had already accused Soros and the Democratic leadership of wanting his political end.
“George Soros, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Crooked Hillary (Clinton) hope this is finally the ‘end of Trump,'” he wrote. “But these radical leftists will never understand that this movement is so much bigger than me.”
‘Do not know him’
These accusations by the former Republican president, echoed by his supporters and Republican elected officials, are unfounded. They do not provide any evidence.
Given the stakes and the exceptional magnitude of the event, Soros, who very rarely responds to conspiracy theorists, broke his silence to deny the accusations.
“In the wake of the indictment of former President Donald Trump by the Manhattan District Attorney, the defendant, his supporters, and various elected Republican Party officials have sought to divert attention from the facts of the case at hand by branding District Attorney Alvin Bragg as ‘Soros-funded’, falsely suggesting that Soros played a role in influencing the decision of the grand jury and district attorney prosecutors,” Michael Vachon, a spokesman, said in an email.
“George Soros has never met, spoken or otherwise communicated with Alvin Bragg,” the spokesperson continued. “Neither George Soros nor the Democracy PAC (a PAC to which Mr. Soros has contributed funds) contributed to Alvin Bragg’s campaign for Manhattan District Attorney.”
The billionaire himself says he doesn’t know Bragg and never directly funded his campaign.
“I did not contribute to his campaign and I do not know him,” Soros told Semafor about Bragg. “I think some on the right would rather focus on wild conspiracy theories than the serious charges against the former president.”
While Soros did not directly contribute to Bragg’s campaign, his son Jonathan and wife Jennifer donated a total of $20,000 to Bragg’s 2021 campaign, according to the New York State Board of Elections.
The link between George Soros and Bragg is indirect: Between 2016 and 2022, George Soros personally and the Democracy PAC have together contributed approximately $4 million to the Color of Change PAC, including $1 million in May 2021, according to Vachon.
“None of those funds went to the Bragg campaign,” the spokesperson said.
The Color Of Change PAC spent $500,000 on Bragg’s 2021 election campaign.
Soros has made numerous contributions in support of reformist prosecutors across the country since 2015. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last summer, the billionaire said he has “no intention of stopping” from supporting progressive candidates who are They are running to become prosecutors or for re-election.
“The funds I provide allow sensible reform-minded candidates to be heard by the public. Judging by the results, the public likes what they are hearing,” Soros said.
The subject of many right-wing conspiracy theories and extremists, Soros is accused by critics of supporting lax candidates for prosecutorial office, which has contributed to a rise in crime in cities under his rule.