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.
Several far-left district attorney candidates have received financial support from Soros, who sees this as an important step in reforming the criminal justice system. According to the reports, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Chicago, Kim Gardner in St. Louis, and George Gascón in Los Angeles are just a few of the controversial DAs who have benefited greatly from his money.
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.