The Origin of George Soros
"My goal is to become the conscience of the world"
There is quite simply no man in politics more influential than George Soros in terms of his wealth, his direct global sphere of influence, and his indirect influence from the political infrastructure he's built over his lifetime.
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He boasts a net worth of $8.6 billion—which is what's left over after he donated more than $32 billion during his lifetime to his Open Society Foundations (OSF), the vehicle he uses to fuel his political influence. (Of note, when I make references to "Soros funding" anything, it's through his OSF.) No other billionaire has "donated" such a large percentage of their net worth according to Forbes , though such donations are largely for his own ideological benefit.
Without even knowing a single thing about Soros, a surface-level understanding of his circle can be gleaned simply by reading the list of guests at his third wedding ceremony back in 2013. They included World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Estonian President Toomas Hendrick Ilves, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Nancy Pelosi, among others. Even Bono made an appearance—and that's not mentioning the other five hundred guests.
Although most of the politically inclined are aware of Soros and his activities, he is at times Schrodinger's meddler, denying his influence to some and boasting about it to others. One such case comes regarding Soros facilitating coups in the name of "democratization." In a 1995 profile in the New Yorker , Soros admits to the "subversive" mission of his network, and that it has required him to wear a "variety of masks." "I would say one thing in one country and another thing in another country," he said, laughing.
When Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze was toppled Soros denied having anything to do with it, telling reporters on March 31, 2004: "Everything in Georgia was done by its people, not by me. I had nothing to do with it." He'd later tell the Los Angeles Times in July that "I'm delighted by what happened in Georgia, and I take great pride in having contributed to it."
Elsewhere, it's common to see publications (especially those that have received funding from Soros) simply deny any accusations of Soros' influence and claim they're examples of "anti-Semitism" without paying any attention to whether the allegations against him are true (because they are).
Whether he wants us to know about it or not, his massive influence and seemingly omnipotent nature of Soros is something that took him a lifetime to achieve. Here is his story.
An ethnic Jew, Soros was born in Budapest in 1930 and survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary before moving to the U.K. in 1947. The Nazi occupation of Hungary began on March 19, 1944, forcing Soros into hiding until being liberated by the Russians on January 12, 1945.
In spring 1944, the Nazis ordered the creation of the Central Council of Hungarian Jews, which was tasked with communicating the wishes of the Nazis and local collaborating authorities to the Jewish community. The council included Jews who were aware of the Nazis' atrocities but believed that they would be exempted from them. And they were exempted from persecution—initially.
Soros was part of the Council before assuming a new identity. He recalled the experience in an interview with the New Yorker : "This was a profoundly important experience for me. My father said, 'You should go ahead and deliver [the summonses], but tell the people that if they report they will be deported.' The reply from one man was 'I am a law-abiding citizen. They can't do anything to me.' I told my father, and that was an occasion for a lecture that there are times when you have laws that are immoral, and if you obey them you perish."
George's father Tivadar recalled that after George's second day on the job, he returned home with a summons, to which Tivadar asked if George knew what it meant. George replied, "I can guess. They'll be interned." Tivadar then told him the Jewish Council has no right to give people orders like that, recalling in his memoir:
"I tried to tell the people I called on not to obey" he [George] said, clearly disappointed that I wouldn't let him work anymore. He was beginning to enjoy his career as a courier: it was all a big adventure.
Soros' biographer echoed similar sentiments, noting that "George had liked the excitement of being a courier but he obeyed his father without complaint." Soros would later cite this experience as a reason for disliking fellow Jews (for being collaborators), while exempting himself.
During the Nazi occupation, Tivadar obtained papers giving his immediate family Christian identities. He decided to split up the family so that if one of them were outed as Jewish, the rest of the family had a chance of surviving.
After the family was split up for their own safety, Soros went to live as Sandor Kiss with a man named Baumbach, as arranged by his father. Baumbach was a friend of Tivadar, an official at the Ministry of Agriculture, and a Nazi collaborator. Baumbach played the role of Soros' godfather. Soros would never acknowledge the role that Baumbach played in likely saving his life, and he died anonymously in 1999. His identity was later revealed in 2018 as Miklós Prohászka.
The "godfather" had the job of taking inventory of possessions seized from Jewish families—trips that Soros accompanied him on. During an interview Soros gave with 60 Minutes , host Steve Kroft asked, "My understanding is that you went…went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews." A number of fact-checkers have attempted to debunk the implications of this interview by stating that Soros merely tagged along instead of actively participated in persecution—but Soros has no remorse even for doing that.
"I mean, that's—that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?" Kroft asked.
"Not, not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't…you don't see the connection. But it was—it created no—no problem at all," Soros said emotionlessly.
"No feeling of guilt," Kroft replied.
When asked how he couldn't sympathize with other Jews being persecuted, Soros sociopathically replied by noting the "humor" in how his behavior then is similar to his behavior now in finance, and then employed the old "just following orders" defense.
"Well, of course…I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was—well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in the markets—that if I weren't there—of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would—would—would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the—whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the—I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt."
A lack of conscience would later prove lucrative in the business world.
SOROS THE PHILOSOPHER
Soros has said that communism repelled him, but also told his father in 1946: "I'd like to go to Moscow and find out about communism. I mean that's where the power is. I'd like to learn more about it." His father advised him to go to London instead.
Soros arrived in England in 1947 and became a student at the London School of Economics (LSE) where he would become acquainted with the philosophy of Karl Popper, who would have a profound influence on his own ideological development.
It's Popper's 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies that Soros described as a "revelation"—and that his "Open Society Foundations" takes its name after. Soros said of the work: "It showed that fascism and communism have a lot in common, and they both stand in opposition to a different principle of social organization, the principle of open society."
The book criticizes the ideologies that Popper believed led to both fascism and communism. Popper argued that totalitarianism came from those who favored what he called the "closed society"—a tribal world where social institutions are based on taboos. Claims to knowledge in the closed society are merely the presentation of one's version of reality. The contrasting "open society" encourages free thought, individualism, democracy, equality. One where individuals are, in Popper's words, "confronted with personal decisions" as opposed to tribal or collectivist ones.
Soros defines the open society as one where "nobody has a monopoly on truth; a society which is not dominated by the state or by any particular ideology, where minorities and minority opinions are respected." He's also defined it in his book Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism as: "standing for freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea."
Above all else, Soros is a globalist who believes that the world should be a "global community" as opposed to individual sovereign states. As early as 1998, Soros would name the U.S. as the primary opponent of "global institutions."
According to Philanthropy Daily 's Eduardo Andino:
For Soros, one of the most important takeaways from Popper's ideas is that no single philosophy or worldview is in possession of the truth. Groups need to let go of "their truth" and work for an open society. But then it follows that the open society becomes, by default, the regnant paradigm, the overarching "truth" by which members of the society must live. If that's the case, there is ultimately no room for diversity of thought and ways of life. Acceptance of individualism and a casting off of traditional customs becomes a prerequisite for membership, because everything else is "totalitarian." Thus, what presents itself as the best type of society for embracing different ways of life is in reality the beginning of the greatest uniformity.
This is one of many ironies that you'll see in the contrast between Soros' claimed philosophy, and his actions. As I aim to make evident to the reader by the end of this book, Soros' efforts are not to uncover truth, but rather to disseminate his own narrative through his realm of influence to create the false reality needed to justify his political vision.
Soros acknowledges the optional nature of reality in his book The Alchemy of Finance (first published in 1987) when it comes to financial markets, and his observations there are applicable to the world of media manipulation. "We live in the real world, but our view of the world does not correspond to the real world," Soros wrote. "…Our view of the world is part of the real world—we are participants. And the gap between reality and our interpretation of it introduces an element of uncertainty into the real world." He notes pages later "people base their actions not on reality but on their view of the world, and the two are not identical."
He reiterated that point in his later book In Defense of Open Society : "There is only one objective reality, but there are as many different subjective
The Soros conceptual framework is built upon what he calls the principle of fallibility and principle of reflexivity, both of which shine insight into the mind of a master propagandist.
Soros explains of the former term, "in situations that have thinking participants, their views of the world never perfectly correspond to the actual state of affairs. People can gain knowledge of individual facts, but when it comes to formulating theories or forming an overall view, their perspective is bound to be either biased or both."
This is what makes propaganda so powerful. Because "The complexity of the world we live in exceeds our capacity to understand it," Soros explains. "Confronted by a reality of extreme complexity, we are obligated to resort to various methods of simplification: generalizations, dichotomies, metaphors, decision rules, and moral precepts, just to mention a few." Has there been a single leftist propaganda campaign in the past two decades that isn't predicated on this framework?
Soros calls the relationship between the mind and reality reflexivity. "I envision reflexivity as a feedback loop between the participants' understanding and the situation in which they participate and I contend that the concept of reflexivity is crucial to understanding situations that have thinking participants." 20 Soros was influenced by Popper's work The Logic of Scientific Discovery , which argued that empirical truth cannot be known with absolute certainty.
Soros identifies three forms that reflexive interactions can take; dynamic near-equilibrium, static far-from-equilibrium, and dynamic far-from-equilibrium.
In dynamic near-equilibrium, perception is close to reality and critical thinking is encouraged. This is what Soros defines as open societies. In static far-from equilibrium, perception and reality diverge wildly and depend on "tribal magic." Totalitarian states reside in this condition and can remain there for long periods of time, Soros argues. In dynamic far-from-equilibrium, the gap between reality and perception grows to a breaking point in which change is forced to occur and reality undergoes a transformation. Soros argues that societies in this state are susceptible to undergoing sudden radical transformations.
Soros lumps both these concepts together into what he calls the "human uncertainty principle," a point where subjective and objective reality can meet through a change in subjective reality, or by a change in objective reality triggered through the manipulative function (outside influence).
These concepts made Soros a fortune in financial markets and also influenced his political donations. "The trick for the investor, or for the philanthropic backer of social revolutions," Duke University's Barry Varela notes, "was to recognize when reflexivity had led perception and reality to diverge to the breaking point."
Despite leading to the foundation of the philosophy that would guide him in business and politics, Soros described life in London as a "big letdown," recalling that at age seventeen, he was lonely and miserable with "very little money and very few connections."
That would all change soon.
MOVE TO AMERICA
After earning a bachelor's (1951), master's (1954), and PhD (year unknown) from the London School of Economics, Soros worked at various merchant banks before heading to America in 1956.
Soros and his mentor Popper differed greatly in their views of America. Three years before his death in 1991, Popper reflected on his time in America with optimism; "It was my first trip to the United States in 1950 that made an optimist of me again. That first trip tore me forever out of a depression caused by the overwhelming influence of Marxism in postwar Europe. Since then I have been to America twenty or twenty-five times, and each time I have been more deeply impressed." Soros took a bleak view that has remained unchanged.
Soros arrived in New York after nine years in London with the sole goal of making money. He initially set himself a five-year deadline to save $500,000 (over $5 million in 2021 dollars), after which he planned to return to Europe. He told his biographer Michael T. Kaufman: "At the time I did not particularly care for the United States. I had acquired some British prejudices; you know, the States were, well, commercial, crass, and so on."
He ended up becoming a U.S. Citizen instead in 1961, but not because he warmed on the States. Soros wrote in his 2003 book The Bubble of American Supremacy : "Who would have thought sixty years ago, when Karl Popper wrote Open Society and Its Enemies , that the United States itself could pose a threat to open society? Yet that is exactly what is happening, both internally and externally."
Soros' criticisms of America go back to our Declaration of Independence. In the same book, Soros argues that the principles contained within the Declaration "are not self-evident truths but arrangements necessitated by our inherently imperfect understanding."
In 1959, Soros moved to Greenwich Village on Christopher Street. In 1961, he married and moved to a different part of the village and had a son in 1963.
Not much is known about the five years Soros spent there, or how entwined he was with the other intelligentsia there. The socialist Michael Harrington, whose book The Other America greatly influenced LBJ's Great Society, frequented the White House Tavern less than a half-block from Soros' apartment. Harrington served on the board of the League of Industrial Democracy in the early '60s, along with Aryeh Neier, whom Soros would later hire to lead his foundations network in 1993.
Poet Allen Ginsberg, a radical whose activities got him placed on the FBI's "Dangerous Subversives" list in 1965, also frequented events in the village while Soros lived there. There's no proof that the two met during that time period, but by the mid-1980s, Ginsberg was a frequent guest at Soros' Fifth Avenue apartment and El Mirador estate on Long Island.
SOROS THE HEDGE FUND MANAGER
Soros began a career in banking, eventually forming the offshore fund Double Eagle in 1969 with $4 million in investment, including $250,000 of his own money. Soros and his assistant Jim Rogers left that venture in 1973 to start Quantum Fund, which was managed by Soros Fund Management (established in 1970). While all the early shareholders are not publicly known, we do know that the extremely wealthy Rothschild family were among the investors.
The fund would prove to be an immediate success and be responsible for Soros' massive fortune.
By 1981 the June issue of Institutional Investor called Soros the "world's greatest money manager," after he had doubled the size of his fund in a single year the year prior, leaving Soros with an estimated $100 million net worth. That ironically turned out to be the fund's worst-performing year (1981) since inception, though it wasn't until 1996 that the fund had another down year.
It was in 1992 that Soros would make his most infamous trade, breaking the Bank of England and making him £1 billion in the process (or £20 for every Englishperson). It was from this trade alone that Soros would become internationally famous (and infamous) in the financial world.
The stage for the trade was set by Britain joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after its creation in March 1979, which was created to reduce variation in exchange rates among European countries by establishing fixed-exchange rates. This system was eventually succeeded by the euro.
Because Germany had the strongest economy in Europe, each country set its currency's value in terms of Deutschmarks, and exchange rates were set between the various countries' currencies and the Deutschmark within a range of plus or minus 6 percent of the agreed rate.
Maintaining that rate required central bankers to monitor currencies closely to intervene if necessary. People trade currencies every day, and they're exchanged for imports and exports, creating a supply and demand for various currencies. As a result, banks need to intervene to maintain the rate in light of this by using their foreign currency reserves to buy their own currency on the open market, by selling their own currency, or by increasing or decreasing interest rates.
Britain joined the ERM with an exchange rate of 2.95 marks per pound, allowing them a range of exchange rates between 2.78 and 3.13 marks to the pound. At this time, inflation was high and the country was also in a period of unsustainable economic growth, and there Soros saw an opportunity as the pound traded at the lower end of what is allowed.
In 1992 Quantum Fund borrowed pounds and sold them for German marks (effectively shorting the pound, aiming to benefit on the difference when converting the marks back into pounds if/when they fall in value). By the end of the day, now known in the financial world as Black Wednesday, Soros had sold short £10 billion worth of pounds, putting extreme pressure on its value. The bet was that the British government wouldn't be able to maintain their commitment to value the pound without rising interest rates high enough to trigger a recession. The British government spent £27 billion in a day to support the pound, but gave up, conceding victory to Soros, who netted over a billion pounds in the process.
Such a trade isn't reflective of genius, but manipulation, and it came at a high cost. Britain, having exhausted its foreign currency reserves, increased interest rates from 10 percent to 12 percent—and the pound continued plummeting regardless. Britain left the ERM later that night.
The economic damage far exceeded Soros' gain, with U.K. export and import prices in pounds increasing by roughly 20 percent. The economic turmoil Soros caused on Black Wednesday would also have an added political bonus for him in that it was a major contributing factor to U.K.'s Conservative Party losing to Labour in the 1997 general election in what would be Labour's largest victory in history.
In almost an instant, Soros' Quantum Fund increased from $15 billion to $19 billion in value (of which Soros and his partners pocketed at least 20 percent, hence the profit of a billion pounds) when the pound was reintroduced on the open market, and only a few months later the fund would be worth $22 billion.
Soros admits that when he bet against the sterling: "I was in effect taking money out of the pockets of British taxpayers. But if I had tried to take social consequences into account, it would have thrown off my risk-reward calculation, and my profits would've been refused."
Soros isn't happy with being known as "the man who broke the bank of England," and blames it on his lack of denial to the press of what we know he did. He's also complained that the media exaggerated his role. Regardless, that didn't stop him from repeating the strategy over and over.
Quantum was the leading offshore hedge fund the year of the infamous pound trade, and four of the six best-performing funds were those under the Soros Management umbrella.
And he didn't stop there.
He wreaked similar havoc with the penning of a letter on June 9, 1993, which he sent to the Times of London arguing that the German mark was weak. He wrote: "I expect the mark to fall against all major currencies," which immediately triggered twenty-four hours of panic-selling, causing Soros' comment to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. His theory of reflexivity had been vindicated.
He did this again on July 14, 1998, suggesting to the Financial Times of London that the Russian government should devalue the ruble by 15–25 percent, causing panic selling once again.
Soros announced a short position against the U.S. dollar on CNN in May 2004 at a time when the dollar had already fallen to a four-year low against the euro, pushing it down even further.
While it was not illegal, Soros also likely took a page out of Bobby Axelrod's playbook and shorted the markets in the aftermath of 9/11. On September 19, he spoke to a group of business leaders in Hong Kong and wouldn't divulge if his fund was short-selling U.S. assets but commented: "I don't think you can run markets on patriotic principles." Later, on CNN, Soros spoke out against military strikes on the Taliban, saying they would be bad for the markets (perhaps something he wanted to become yet another self-fulfilling prophecy).
By 1993, Soros was taking in a paycheck that surpassed the GDP of forty-two member nations of the United Nations.
Much of Soros' behavior thus far looks a lot like market manipulation, and it's an offense he has faced consequences for on other occasions. Soros had signed a consent decree with the SEC in 1979 after being charged with stock manipulation related to his purchase of American computer manufacturer Computer Sciences Corporation as it was about to issue new shares. The SEC alleges that Soros sold shares to push down the price of the new shares. Soros agreed to not engage in this kind of behavior in the future while admitting no wrongdoing.
It wouldn't be until 2002 that Soros would run into troubles with authorities again when Soros was found guilty of insider trading following a fourteen-year investigation.
Soros was accused of buying stakes worth $50 million in four formally state-owned French companies for his Quantum Endowment Fund in 1988. Specifically, Soros was accused of having obtained and traded on insider information before a corporate raid pushed up the stock price of Société Générale, which was privatized in 1987. He was fined €2.2 million, the amount he was accused of profiting from the trade, but that amount was later reduced to €940k on appeal, making his insider trade net profitable.
"I am astounded and dismayed by the court's ruling. I will appeal the decision to the highest level necessary," Soros said after the verdict. When it came to proving his innocence, Soros lost an appeal to France's highest court in 2006, and then took his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (he actually claimed that fining him violated his human rights), which also shot down his appeal in 2011. Given Soros' influence over the court (more on that in a later chapter), the rejection is strong evidence of his guilt.
By 2018, Soros Fund Management ranked second on the list of wealth generated for investors since inception for hedge funds (with $43.9 billion generated over that time period), beaten only by Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates ($57.8 billion).
Someone who invested $1 million during Soros' hedge fund debut would've seen their fortune grow to an incredible $2 billion by 2011, the year he stopped managing outside money.
We can all fantasize what we'd spend our fortune on if we saw such outsized gains. For Soros, the answer was what he considers "philanthropy," but everyone else can recognize as political influence, often for his own financial benefit.
SOROS THE PHILANTHROPIST
By the late 1970s, Soros' fund had reached $100 million in assets, and he amassed a personal fortune of $25 million.
Soros says it was at that point he realized he had enough money. "I determined after some reflection that I had enough money. After a great deal of thinking, I came to the conclusion that what really mattered to me was the concept of an open society." He then proceeded to grow his fortune 150-fold throughout the rest of his career.
Soros' first encounter with philanthropy was in London at the London School of Economics (LSE) when he tried to game the system and get some money from the Jewish Board of Guardians but was refused because he wasn't learning a trade. After breaking his leg during a temporary job at a railroad, Soros again tried to get some money from them, personally writing to the chairman of the board that he was sad they were "unwilling to help a young Jewish student who had broken his leg and was in need." Despite not meeting the trade school requirement, that letter got him charity. "Although I had deceived the foundation, I felt morally justified because they had investigated my case and did not find out I was lying," Soros reasoned.
Soros' first philanthropic effort was providing scholarships to black students living under apartheid at Cape Town University in 1979. In the '80s, Soros began directing his philanthropic influence toward Central and Eastern Europe, which were under the control of the Soviet Union at the time. According to one of Soros' Hungarian associates, this marked the first time that Communist authorities anywhere were met with resistance from the private sector on matters of social and cultural significance.
Soros created and named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Institute. Off to a slow start, Soros took an apprenticeship at Helsinki Watch, which later became Human Rights Watch (HRW), a group Soros would eventually donate $100 million to. HRW cofounder Aryeh Neier would later serve as president of the Open Society Institute from 1993 to 2012. Soros credits Neier's tenure for the foundation, which was later renamed the Open Society Foundations, taking its modern form.
In 1991, Soros wrote: "My original objective has been attained: the communist system is well and truly dead. My new objective is the establishment of an open society in its stead. That will be much harder to accomplish. Construction is always more laborious than destruction and much less fun."
Many take a cynical view of the motives behind his philanthropy. In 1995, the London Sunday Times observed: "Soros investment funds did not pay taxes in the United States between 1969 and 1986, enjoying a 'free ride' that netted him and his investors billions of dollars. Until the American Tax Reform Act of 1986 was passed, Quantum Fund legally avoided paying a cent." The Times then noted that "All Soros's philanthropy began in 1987, the first year that he and his fund has to pay taxes. Charitable matters are tax deductible and Soros says his aim is to give away half his yearly income, the maximum he can deduct." While it was actually in 1979 that Soros began his philanthropy, his spike in contributions does begin in 1987. Soros' philanthropy rose from $3 million in 1987 to over $300 million a year by 1992.
The New Yorker 's Connie Bruck said that Soros admitted to her that his philanthropy opened closed doors to political influence. Soros said when he first began giving out money in Central Europe, "People like the dictator in Romania, Iliescu, suddenly became very interested in seeing me…my influence increased."
Soros is, in his own words, "both selfish and self-centered, and I have no qualms about acknowledging it." He continues, "The activities of the OSF extend to every part of the globe and cover a wide range of subjects that even I am surprised by it. I am, of course, not the only one who is selfish and self-centered; most of us are. I am just more willing to admit it."
Journalist Neil Clark noted of Soros, that
"the sad conclusion is that for all his liberal quoting of Popper, Soros deems a society 'open' not if it respects human rights and basic freedoms, but if it is 'open' for him and his associates to make money. And, indeed, Soros has made money in every country he has helped to prise 'open.' In Kosovo, for example, he has invested $50 million in an attempt to gain control of the Trepca mine complex, where there are vast reserves of gold, silver, lead and other minerals estimated to be worth in the region of $5 billion. He thus copied a pattern he has deployed to great effect over the whole of eastern Europe: of advocating 'shock therapy' and 'economic reform,' then swooping in with his associates to buy valuable state assets at knock-down prices."
In 2021, the left-leaning journalism nonprofit ProPublica (which receives just under 2 percent of its funding from Soros himself) released a report that used fifteen years of confidential IRS records to calculate the effective tax rate that billionaires pay on their fortunes (which was low because unrealized capital gains aren't taxed). Among the billionaires named was Soros, who didn't pay a cent of income tax for three years in a row from 2016 to 2018 according to their report.
While the other billionaires listed in their report are extensively criticized, Soros only gets a brief mention, and immediate faux-rebuttal in the form of a quote from an OSF representative that "Between 2016 and 2018 George Soros lost money on his investments, therefore he did not owe federal income taxes in those years. Mr. Soros has long supported higher taxes for wealthy Americans." A quick fact-check reveals that Soros Fund Management gained 5 percent in 2016, 8.9 percent in 2017, and 0.8 percent in 2018.
A more likely culprit for Soros' lack of tax burden (at least in 2017 and 2018) is his transfer of $18 billion of his own wealth to the OSF. That move guaranteed that those funds will be sheltered from the IRS forever in what one commentator called the "single biggest tax dodge in U.S. history, yet no one on the right or left seems to have raised an eyebrow." The donation also allows Soros to deduct up to 20 percent of its market value on his personal taxes ($3.6 billion), which he can carry forward for five years, effectively giving him a double write-off (not paying taxes on future income while dodging deferred capital gains taxes on donated stock).
Soros' initial meddling was in anticommunist activities, but he now says that he considers "market fundamentalism" and America itself to be greater threats than Marxism because Marxism has been discredited. Amusingly, the only people who don't seem to agree that Marxism has been discredited are the exact kind of leftist ideologues that Soros funds.
His views evolved further from there; "Until recently, I was inveighing against market fundamentalism, which I considered a greater current threat than Marxism. Now I regard the ideologue's of American supremacy as even more dangerous."
Soros outlined his plans after the collapse of communism in "Underwriting Democracy," pointing to two major projects: the creation of Central European University and the creation of an international network "for the placement of East and Central European candidates as trainees in Western firms."
Soros approached the Hungarian government about setting up a foundation in 1984, which they approved. By the end of the 1980s, he'd established foundations in China, the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. In the 1990s, he'd direct his focus to Romania and the Ukraine.
Soros' political and economic interests are intertwined more often than they're not, such as when he played a large role in shaping economic policy in Russia under Bill Clinton's administration.
Clinton dealt with Russia and former Soviet states through private back channels to circumvent State department procedures. He assembled a small team known as the "troika," which included the State Department's Strobe Talbott, Treasury's Lawrence Summers, and VP/internet inventor Al Gore. Talbott's position was elevated to chairman of a Super Committee on the former Soviet Union, earning him the de facto title of "Russian policy czar."
Talbott turned to Soros for help because he was a businessman with experience in the region. Talbott would later tell the New Yorker in 1995 of Soros that "I would say that it [his foreign policy] is not identical to the foreign policy of the U.S. government—but it's compatible with it. It's like working with a friendly, allied, independent entity, if not a government. We try to synchronize our approach to the former Communist countries with Germany, France, Great Britain—and with George Soros." He went on to describe Soros as "a national resource—indeed, a national treasure."
Anne Williamson, who has been published widely on Soviet and Russian affairs, said,
"The Clintons welcomed Soros with open arms. Soros performed services for the Clintons, and in return received wide latitude for his business ventures in the former Soviet bloc. Soros not only expanded his fortune under Bill and Hillary, but he also fit in with their countercultural zeitgeist. Through them, Soros found a public platform to espouse his wacky politics. With Bush in power, Soros no longer has that kind of influence. That's a big part of what's driving him crazy."
Soros admitted as much in the 1995 PBS interview where he infamously showed no remorse for briefly working for the Nazis' Jewish Council in Hungary: "I like to influence policy. I was not able to get to George Bush [Senior]. But now I think I have succeeded with my influence…I do now have great access in [the Clinton] administration. There is no question about this. We actually work together as a team."
Soros had begun positioning himself in 1989 when he funded Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs to create an economic reform plan for Poland. Sachs ended up favoring economic "shock therapy"—removing all price controls, currency controls, trade restrictions, investment restrictions, and other barriers to instantly transition to capitalism. Poland implemented that plan in January 1990, causing immediate hyperinflation. Soros remarked that the transition was "very tough on the population, but people were willing to take a lot of pain in order to see real change."
After that, Soros and Sachs turned to Russia to persuade Mikhail Gorbachev to try the same policy in the Soviet Union, which he rejected. Soros would later undermine Gorbachev when he tried to secure loans from Western lenders by denouncing him in the press and arguing his reforms would fail. His attacks on Gorbachev in the West also imperiled Russia's access to foreign aid.
Gorbachev's replacement, Boris Yeltsin, would prove to be more approving of the Soros-Sachs agenda, and he removed all price controls in January 1992, leading to inflation of 2,500 percent and an economic blowup. Corruption would also derail the needed transition to capitalism, with one scholar estimating that despite 57 percent of Russian firms being privatized, the state only received $3–5 billion in compensation for them as they were sold at a fraction of their true value to oligarchs. By 1996 a mere six Russian businessmen had controlled 60 percent of the nation's natural resources.
The massive corruption was impossible to miss, as the Washington Post 's David Ignatius explained in a 1999 article:
You can see the question rumbling toward Al Gore like a freight train in the night: What did the vice president know about the looting of Russia by organized crime, and why didn't he do more to stop it?
That issue—what the heck, let's call it "Russiagate"—has come into sharper focus this month, thanks to some powerful reporting that has highlighted the lawlessness of modern Russia and the acquiescence of the Clinton administration in the process of decline and decay there.
Also potentially troubling for Gore is evidence that the Russian central bank speculated with some of the roughly $20 billion the IMF has lent to Russia since 1992.
What makes the Russian case so sad is that the Clinton administration may have squandered one of the most precious assets imaginable—which is the idealism and goodwill of the Russian people as they emerged from 70 years of Communist rule. The Russia debacle may haunt us for generations. Gore played a key role in that messy process, and he has a lot of explaining to do.
Sachs and Soros played a major role in influencing Russia in the 1990s. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) outsourced the job of overseeing Russia's economic transition to Harvard's Institute for International Development, which Sachs headed from 1995 to 1999. As such, Sachs and his team were official economic advisers to Yeltsin. They wielded so much influence over Yeltsin that he often enacted their reforms through presidential decree to avoid parliament—decrees that were sometimes drafted by Sachs and his team themselves.
Sachs would later resign as director of the Institute in May 1999 amid a DOJ probe into the institute's Russia operations. Harvard shut down the Institute in January 2000, but not before it was hit with a DOJ lawsuit alleging misuse of USAID funds, which Harvard settled out of court for $26 million.
While Soros insists that there was no corruption involved in his deals in Russia, he did invest in Russia's second-largest steel mill Novolipetsk Kombinat and in the Russian oil firm Sidanko as they were being privatized. He was joined in those purchases by Harvard Management Company, which invested its endowment fund. The bidding was closed to foreign investors, but Soros and Harvard Management were able to participate in the rigged auction by making their purchases through the Sputnik Fund, an investment fund tied to oligarch Vladimir Potanin.
When Soros was asked in 1994 by a New Republic reporter to describe his power and influence in the former Soviet states, he replied, "Just write that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire."
By 1995, Soros says he completed "phase 1" of his agenda of "opening up closed societies." It was at that point that he moved on to phase two: making open societies more viable. All the activities of his OSF up to that point had been concentrated internationally—it was now "time to do something at home."
Soros began reflecting on America and his perceived deficiencies of our society. He developed a strategic plan and then assembled a group of social philosophers to examine it that included Bard College President Leon Botstein and others. There were two ideas of his that came to the forefront: that market values had "penetrated into areas where they did not properly belong" and undermine professional values; and that fear has "stifled the critical process and gave rise to false dogmas characterized by prejudice and intolerance, which undermines the principles of the open society."
He singles out two "problems" that are incredible to prioritize given all the problems in the modern world. They are that people aren't progressive enough on the issue of assisted suicide, and that society is too intolerant of drug use.
Soros launched the Project on Death in America, which was the first project he used the media to amplify, relying on PBS's Bill Moyers, who drew heavily on work sponsored by Soros in a five-part TV series on death.
Soros' own personal interests are arguably the dominant motivating factor behind everything he does. "In short, philanthropy had made me happy," Soros once wrote lines before admitting: "Clearly, I am no saint, nor do I aspire to be one."
It's not until 2003 that Soros entered presidential politics, with the George W. Bush era causing him to go into overdrive in influencing both presidential elections and an array of left-wing organizations to permanently alter America's social fabric.
He claims that he has "made it a principle to pursue my self-interest in my business, subject only to legal and ethical limitations, and to serve the public interest as a public intellectual and philanthropist. If the two are in conflict, I make sure that the public interest prevails."
The "self-interest" portion certainly is believable.
George Soros, the 2020 Election, and the Biden White House
George Soros has long been involved in politics, but his foray into U.S. politics is relatively recent (in the context of the life of a nonagenarian). Rather than recede from the public eye during his twilight years, Soros has continued backing many progressive causes. "The bigger the danger, the bigger the threat, the more I feel engaged to confront it," Soros stated during the Trump presidency.
After giving over $5 billion to causes in Africa, Asia, and the former Soviet Bloc, Soros' first major interference in U.S. politics was during the administration of George W. Bush, whom he accused of being guided by a "supremacist ideology" when it came to U.S. power.
Soros contributed over $18 million toward opposing Bush in the 2004 election against John Kerry, according to the New York Times , making him the biggest donor to 527 advocacy groups that election cycle. Soros personally estimates he spent over $27 million.
Kerry and Bush were neck and neck in the polls, leaving Soros to publicly state that the presidential race was "too close for comfort," which he described at the time as "the most important election of my lifetime." In an op-ed for the Independent , Soros explained why he campaigned across America to put Kerry in the White House: "Under President Bush, America has lost its credibility as a champion of open society." Soros reiterated that nobody is in possession of the "ultimate truth." "Leaders who claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth offer an escape from uncertainty," Soros wrote. "But that is a snare, because those leaders are bound to be wrong."
Bush had posited that offense was the best defense for the nation and Americans were safer at home because soldiers were fighting the terrorists abroad. The argument resonated with an electorate fearful of terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks, but Soros labeled Bush's call "a Siren's song" that was "exploiting the fears generated by 9/11." He urged that the country must "face reality instead of finding solace in false certainties." Soros argued that America's future as an open society depended on resisting the Siren's song.
Soros asserted that "democracy cannot be imposed by military means" and terrorism cannot be fought by the use of military force alone. He believed that the war on terror was "an abstraction," arguing that the terrorists were "not all alike." Soros wrote that most of the men attacking American soldiers in Iraq "originally had nothing to do with [Al-Qaeda]" and had been "generated by the policies of the Bush administration."
Soros pointed to a philosophical difference between the two contenders. He described the war on terror as "a one-dimensional presentation of reality" defined by Bush. Soros considered Bush single-minded while Kerry was nuanced. To Soros, the reelection of Bush meant the war on terror would never end. "The terrorists are invisible, therefore they can never disappear. It is our civil liberties that may disappear instead," Soros wrote.
He gave $12.05 million toward Joint Victory Campaign 2004, and then $7 million to America Coming Together, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org's voter fund, $325k to the Young Voter Alliance, $325k to 21st Century Democrats, $300k to the Real Economy Group, and $250k to Democracy for America.
$3 million was pledged to liberal think tank Center for American Progress, then led by John Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff during the Clinton years.
Another one of the PACs he backed, America Coming Together (ACT), would later be slapped with the third-largest enforcement penalty in the history of the FEC (at the time) for using unrelated soft money to boost Kerry and other Democrats.
The organizers of ACT and its executive committee members had close ties to the Democratic Party, including several prominent labor leaders such as ACT's chief executive officer Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO; Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and Gina Glantz, assistant to the president of SEIU who also served as senior adviser to the campaign of Democrat Howard Dean. ACT's headquarters was also located in the same building in downtown Washington as the temporary headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. According to press reports, ACT was located on the fourth floor of the facility, while the DNC was located on the seventh and eighth floors.
Both America Coming Together and MoveOn were 527 groups, tax-exempt organizations under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code that were entitled to receive unlimited contributions from individuals. Soros postured it as the wealthy financing political mobilization and grassroots discussion. In other words, what harm was done if a philanthropist tossed money to political outfits that sought to unseat Bush? In 2004, 527 groups became partisan spin-offs, a predictable consequence of placing new limitations on parties. Large donations to such groups' war chests to influence federal elections were able to buy influence with federal candidates, even if the organizations operated as independent entities.
In March 2002, Congress enacted the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) to stop the injection of soft money into federal elections. Since the enactment of McCain-Feingold, as the campaign-finance law was also called, a number of political operatives and donors engaged in efforts to circumvent the act by using soft money to influence the 2004 presidential and congressional elections. The schemes involved the use of the so-called 527 groups as vehicles to raise and spend soft money.
McCain-Feingold blocked soft money from being poured into the national party committees, but it didn't stop funds from being sent outside the system. Party loyalists worked overtime to develop strategies to keep the soft money spigot open without also violating the complex new law.
In an op-ed column for the Washington Post , Soros described the BCRA as an attempt to limit the influence that special interests can gain by financing candidates and to level the playing field between the two parties, claiming that the contributions he made were "in that spirit."
Soros maintained that both ACT and MoveOn were transparent and filed detailed and frequent reports with government regulators. He wrote that he contributed to independent organizations that by law, which minimized the ability to purchase influence in exchange for contributions, were forbidden to coordinate activities with political parties or candidates. Soros claimed that he was not seeking such influence. Soros maintained that his contributions were made in "the common interest," insisting that ACT was just working to register voters and MoveOn was engaging constituents in the national debate over Bush's policies.
Soros explained the "urgency" to defeat Bush during a speech before the National Press Club in October before the election. "I have never been heavily involved in partisan politics" he unironically began his speech, "but these are not normal times." The bulk of his speech was in opposition to Bush's foreign policy, particularly in Iraq.
He told USA Today that defeating Bush is the "central focus" of his life, and that he'd spend the entirety of his fortune to remove Bush from office if his removal were a guarantee. Days before the election, he commented that in the event of a Bush victory, "`I shall go into some kind of monastery to reflect…I will be asking what's wrong with us."
Soros backed Obama back when he was running for Senate, holding a fundraiser at his New York home for his Illinois senate campaign in June 2004. Soros personally donated $60,000. A special provision of the campaign-finance law allowed greater contributions to candidates who were running against millionaires. Four members of the Soros family had also donated to the Senate campaign, awarding Obama one of the richest Soros nods.
Two years later, Obama's campaign staff even asked to use Soros' offices on Hillary Clinton's home turf for meetings with prominent Democratic donors amid presidential musings. Obama and the left-wing heavy hitters mingled one December 2006 afternoon in a midtown conference room that belonged to none other than Soros.
The assembly of elites included investment banker Hassan Nemazee, Wall Street giant Blair Effron, private-equity powerhouse Mark Gallogly, and hedge-fund manager Orin Kramer. Most were considered big-time Kerry supporters in 2004, but all were uncommitted for 2008.
Robert Wolf, who would become the CEO of UBS Americas and later hold three presidential appointments under Obama, was also present and emerged as Obama's most copious cash collector, next to Soros, in the Big Apple. Known as Obama's chief Wall Street rainmaker, Wolf hosted high-dollar cocktail parties and soirées, harvested over $500,000 in the 2008 election cycle, and committed to raise the same in contributions for the reelection campaign.
Obama's networking among Democratic donor circles helped to make the campaign's monstrous fundraising apparatus as daunting as Clinton's sphere of influence. The courtship of Wolf, a hungry newcomer ready to spend big bucks, was thanks to the Soros venue where Obama and Wolf met for the first time.
Soros was pictured behind Obama during a 2007 fundraiser event for his presidential campaign and would himself be a large donor. White House visitor logs show that Soros paid Obama a visit during the first months of his administration on March 24 and 25.
Soros waited until September 2012 to donate again to Obama, giving $1 million to PAC Priorities USA to back him and an additional $500k to two congressional super PACS, House Majority PAC and Majority PAC. The contributions were announced at a fundraising luncheon headlined by Bill Clinton. Obama took the money despite his earlier opposition to the SCOTUS legalizing unlimited outside donations.
According to emails released by the State Department, Soros told a close Hillary Clinton ally in 2012 that he regretted backing Barack Obama over her in 2008 and praised Hillary for giving him an "open door" to discuss policy.
Soros had publicly told the New York Times that Obama was his "greatest disappointment"—but this may not just be because Obama wasn't liberal enough for his liking. Instead, Soros complained that Obama "closed the door" on him after he secured the presidency. "He made one phone call thanking me for my support, which was meant to last for five minutes, and I engaged him, and he had to spend another three minutes with me, so I dragged it out to eight minutes," Soros said.
Soros had previously complained to other financiers about Obama in 2010; "If this president can't do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else."
Despite his criticisms, Soros still maintained influence when he could. White House visitor logs prove he met with Obama's controversial top adviser on ISIS, chief national security official Rob Malley, in October 2015. Although the meeting in the Executive Office Building occurred before Malley's promotion, when he was named the ISIS czar several weeks later, the terrorist group was almost certainly the topic of discussion. At the time, Malley was Obama's "point man" leading the Middle East desk of the National Security Council before he was promoted in November to serve as the president's senior adviser for the counter-ISIS campaign. Soros also sat on the International Crisis Group's board of trustees, pumping funds into the antiwar organization where Malley was the Middle East director before he was tapped by the Obama administration.
When Hillary Clinton, whose ear Soros did have, was the Democrat nominee, he ratcheted up spending once again. He donated $8 million toward PACs backing Hillary in 2015 (most going toward Priorities USA Action), and then an additional $12.6 million in 2016 to PACs backing Hillary and congressional Democrats.
The 2004 Take Back America Conference in Washington, D.C. was the first time Hillary Clinton and George Soros appeared together on the same stage. Hillary introduced Soros "Now, among the many people who have stood up and said 'I cannot sit idly by and watch this happen to the country I love,' is George Soros, and I have known George Soros for a long time now, and I first came across his work in the former Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, when I was privileged to travel there, both on my own and with my husband on behalf of our country…we need more people like George Soros, who is fearless and willing to step up when it counts."
Soros began the anti-Bush speech by stating how "very, very proud" he was to be introduced by Hillary, and revealed how entwined the two are. "I have a great, great admiration for her. I've seen her deliver a speech in Davos about open society that explained the ideas better than anybody else that I've heard. I've seen her visit Central Asia, where I have foundations, and she was very effective, more effective than most of our statesmen in propagating democracy, freedom, and open society."
We don't know exactly when Hillary Clinton and Soros became acquainted, but they clearly have known each other for some time. Hillary has said the first time she became aware of Soros was through his work in the former USSR.
The Clintons hosted the new president of the Ukraine Leonid Kuchma at the White House on November 22, 1994, with press reports claiming that Soros was in attendance.
In November 1997, Hillary traveled to Central Asia to visit various former Soviet Republics. During the trip, she cut the ribbon for the opening of the Soros-backed American University of Kyrgyzstan, where she received the school's first honorary degree. She praised Soros and the Open Society Institute in her acceptance speech.
Regurgitating the same language he employed against Bush, in an op-ed for The Guardian , Soros urged voters ahead of the 2016 presidential election to "resist the siren song" of Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the leading two candidates in nationwide polls of the GOP primary. Soros chastised how Republicans have framed the fight against jihadi terrorist groups and argued that fear is the greatest threat to open society, a recapitulation of his signature "open society" rhetoric. As for what would territorially decimate jihadi terrorist groups like ISIS, one year of the Trump presidency did the trick.
Soros poured more money into the 2020 election with the goal of defeating Trump than he spent in all prior U.S. elections combined. This was an election where "dark money" spending (political contributions in which the source of funding remains anonymous) topped $1 billion—and most of it to the benefit of Democrats.
Giving his own personal spin to the "this is the most important election of our lifetimes" cliché, Soros told the World Economic Forum at Davos that the fate of the world was at stake in 2020. From the sidelines at an annual private dinner set during the conference that featured business and political leaders, Soros took aim at Trump, alleging that his "narcissism" has turned into "a malignant disease." The egoist who spends billions to influence global politics then blasted Trump, a fellow billionaire, as a "con man and narcissist who wants the world to revolve around him."
On the rise of Trump and populism worldwide, Soros bemoaned that "everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong" (which to normal people means that everything that could go right has gone right). Soros acknowledged in an interview with The Washington Post that he was surprised by Trump's election victory. "Apparently, I was living in my own bubble," Soros lamented the turn of events. Trump's own America First platform ran counter to the globalist agenda that Soros continues to push. Trump, he said, "is willing to destroy the world."
Soros created Democracy PAC in 2019 to serve as his vehicle to influence the 2020 election. It raised and spent $81 million toward that goal, with $70 million of the funding coming from Soros himself. 118 That represents a tripling of his presidential election spending from 2016. He initially planned to "only" double 2016 spending. This came after Soros ramped up lobbying spending in 2019 to levels higher than what corporate giants Amazon, Facebook, Boeing, and Alphabet (Google's parent company) spent.
Among the biggest recipients of funds included the Strategic Victory Fund ($3 million), Senate Majority PAC ($1.5 million), and Working Families Organization ($1 million), among others. Soros attempted to obscure the source of his donations by donating through a PAC instead of in his own name (though he did directly donate to some funds, including the DNC-led Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund, and the Biden Victory Fund).
Although this fact is obscured by Soros mostly donating to organizations via his PAC, if his contributions were counted as personal contributions, he would've been the largest individual backer of Biden. The arrangement allowed Soros to keep his name off the top of donor lists.
Democrat victors who've benefited from Soros' wallet have railed against the influence of big money in the political sector. Biden's government reform plan promised to "reduce the corrupting influence of money in politics." The president's campaign website urged that we "flush big money from the system and have public financing of our elections."
"Democracy works best when a big bank account or a large donor list are not prerequisites for office, and elected representatives come from all backgrounds, regardless of resources," Biden's plan to "guarantee government works for the people" read. "But for too long, special interests and corporations have skewed the policy process in their favor with political contributions."
Biden's talking points parroted those of Obama's final State of the Union address: "We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families or hidden interests can't bankroll our elections."
Such anti-dark money rhetoric from Soros-backed buckraking candidates underlines the Democratic Party's hypocritical dependency on large contributions from billionaires. Democrats have long understood and engaged in the battle for cash, perpetuating money's importance in signaling any candidate's plausibility—thus electability in the establishment's eyes.
Soros and failed Democratic congressional candidate Scott Wallace helped to bankroll Heartland Fund, an intricate "fiscal sponsor" network. The collaborative effort targeted Midwestern voters by building "power across the divides of the American heartland." Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton in several Midwestern states that she was expected to carry in the 2016 election. The "neglected" region has since become a honey pot for deep-pocketed megadonors and liberal activist groups alike seeking to move money there.
The Open Society Foundations contributed $200,000 to the Heartland Fund for a one-year grant in 2019; however, the contribution is not mentioned in the fund's press release on the collaboration, and the total amounts given by the groups are not known.
Democrats also capitalized on the coronavirus crisis to expand sought-after government control of private lives and businesses. Priorities USA Action, the Democratic Party's largest super PAC, spent millions on advertisements that criticized Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, and Wisconsin.
A thirty-second television commercial produced by Priorities USA Action called "Exponential Threat" charted the rise in coronavirus cases and was overlaid with soundbites of Trump's initial pandemic-related comments. Another fifteen-second ad visualized the spread of COVID-19 cases across the United States, striking a similar anti-Trump theme. Two other hits, titled "Steady Leadership" and "Better Prepared," cast Biden as the remedy to "a White House in chaos."
In February 2020, Priorities USA Action super PAC received $3 million from Soros' own Democracy PAC, according to FEC records. The seven-figure donation accounted for 77 percent of the $3.9 million Priorities USA Action reported raising during that month.
While supporting organizations that backed Biden directly, Soros also moved to boost organizations looking to change the rules of the game. As the Capital Research Center uncovered from IRS filings, Soros' funding vehicles sought to boost vote-by-mail and absentee voting. The Capital Research Center's (CRC) Scott Walter writes:
The Brennan Center for Justice, heavily funded by Soros's Open Society, is spearheading a plan that calls for a "universal vote-by-mail option for all voters," or more precisely, absentee ballot initiatives. The newest portion of the plan involves "secure drop boxes in accessible locations for voters to drop off ballots directly."
Voting by mail expands the chain of events involved in casting a ballot and radically expands the opportunities for fraudsters to tamper with the process. In 36 states, somebody else can legally deliver voters' ballots with their permission, usually a family member or attorney. But 13 states generally allow anybody to collect absentee ballots—with serious consequences.
Under the circumstances of the pandemic, the Democrat Party was also able to prey on destabilization and panic to promote the vote-by-mail scheme.
By the middle of 2020, Democrats had already managed to pass into law some absentee ballot provisions by hiding them in the coronavirus relief bill, a monstrous $2 trillion package Congress passed in late March. Nearly half of voters would end up voting by absentee or mail-in ballot in the 2020 election. An overwhelming number of votes by mail were cast for Biden. In key swing state Pennsylvania, 75 percent of mail-in ballots went to Biden.
Although the vote-by-mail system appears to make voting easier for the harried, the disabled, and the elderly, it leaves the electoral process vulnerable to fraud. For example, a seventy-nine-year-old blind Nevada woman signed an affidavit attesting that her completed ballot had already been mailed without her consent when she requested in-person assistance. Clark County election officials maintained that her signature matched and that her vote had been cast. "I said, it couldn't match, because I didn't vote," she persisted, later sharing her story at a Trump press conference.
Soros backed organizations pushing vote-by-mail. The donor network Way to Win launched a $59 million effort to encourage people of color to vote by mail in November and partnered with the Ford Foundation and Soros' Open Society for that goal.
The Soros-funded Center for American Progress said that voting by mail "must become the default option for the vast majority of Americans" during the pandemic.
The activist group Stand Up America, which is funded by the Sixteen Thirty Fund (which the Soros-funded Democracy Alliance recommended donors invest millions into) launched a nationwide campaign to urge Americans to demand Congress to make voting changes.
Described by the left-wing Vox as the "closest thing that exists to a left-wing conspiracy" in the U.S., the Democracy Alliance is a network of wealthy donors that enacted a $275 million spending blitz against Trump. The alliance's leader, Gara LaMarche, worked for Soros as the vice president and director of U.S. programs at the Open Society Institute.
Other Soros-funded organizations that pushed for mail-in voting included Common Cause and Public Citizen. Groups indirectly funded by Soros that made the push include the National Vote at Home Institute and National Association of Non-Partisan Reformers.
February 4th, 2022 | 0 Comments
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