Rushing to meet President Donald Trump’s demands for retribution against his enemies this fall, the Department of Justice fumbled at least two high-profile cases: Its prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of which were tossed by a federal judge in late November
The department now appears to have made another blunder. In September, heeding calls from the president, a senior Trump administration lawyer dispatched a memo urging government prosecutors to investigate and seek charges against liberal megadonor George Soros and his son, Alex. To support such charges, the DOJ official directed prosecutors to a just-published report from a conservative think tank, Capital Research Center.
The report in question, initially titled “Exclusive: Soros’ Open Society Gave Terrorist and Pro-Terror Groups Over $80 Million,” was riddled with errors and exaggerations. It was also, around the time the DOJ memo referencing it went out, quietly replaced online with a new version featuring a less inflammatory — and potentially defamatory — title, but many of the same errors.
After the DOJ circulated its memo encouraging government lawyers to utilize the report’s findings, Capital Research Center’s president went on a mini press tour, warning that the report did not contain the kind of evidence necessary to bring criminal charges. Since then, there has been no public mention of the DOJ’s efforts to go after Soros.
The administration’s haphazard attempt to bring charges against Soros is part of an intensifying campaign to weaponize the Justice Department against figures the president views as enemies — but it’s a campaign that hasn’t yielded much in the way of results. “People are rightly concerned about this use of the criminal justice system, because nothing is more coercive than prosecutions which can lead to loss of liberty,” says Ben Wizner, deputy legal director at the ACLU. “But at the same time, the criminal justice system has far more procedural due process protections than other forms of government coercion. In a way, while it’s the most threatening to targets, it’s also the most challenging for the administration, and that’s why you’re seeing them not get past the starting line on some of their most high profile efforts.”
The push to prosecute Soros kicked off in August, when Trump called for the arrests of the 95-year-old billionaire and his son, who chairs Open Society’s board of directors, in a post on Truth Social. “George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America,” the president wrote.
There was no evidence to support Trump’s wild accusations, but he was not the first to level them. A few weeks before Trump’s post, in July, Scott Walter, Capital Research Center’s president, testified before the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing on “How Leftist Nonprofit Networks Exploit Federal Tax Dollars to Advance a Radical Agenda.”
Toward the end of his appearance, Walter mentioned that his organization was working on a report about George Soros which he said would show “over $80 million going to nonprofits that support terrorism.” Such contributions, he added, were “debatably not kosher under 501(c)(3) laws.”
Then, in September, the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a public appearance at a university in Utah. In the immediate aftermath of the event, Trump blamed “radical leftists,” and went on to suggest that Soros might be responsible for stirring discontent. “We’re going to look into Soros because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people because this is more than protests — this is real agitation,” the president said in an interview with Fox News.
Exactly one week after Kirk was assassinated, Capital Research Center published “Exclusive: Soros’ Open Society Gave Terrorist and Pro-Terror Groups Over $80 Million,” by a researcher named Ryan Mauro. The day the report was published, Glenn Beck hosted Mauro for an episode of his show commemorating Kirk. Mauro, Beck said, “has really done the work and come up with some smoking guns — especially on George Soros — that Donald Trump can use as RICO charges.” Mauro goes on to tell Beck about the report’s “amazing findings,” which he says will allow “President Trump … to go after Soros’ network of hate in various ways.”
Shortly thereafter, the report was included in the memo dispatched to U.S. attorney’s offices, suggesting DOJ lawyers should use the report’s allegations as the basis to open criminal cases against Open Society. Possible charges floated included racketeering, arson, wire fraud, and material support for terrorism, according to the New York Times.
The original report — which is simply text on white background, no graphics — does not resemble the more polished reports Capital Research Center usually publishes. It was later replaced with a slicker PDF with a different, considerably softer title, one that backs away from the accusation that Open Society funds “terrorist” groups. The second version, titled “Open Society, Closed Eyes: The $80 Million Soros Pipeline to Extremism,” also includes a second byline: Scott Walter, the group’s president, is listed alongside Mauro.
Both reports contain significant errors, according to Open Society, whose publicly available data Capital Research used. They incorrectly list the dates that Open Society grants were disbursed, misattribute which grants went to which organizations, and reference groups that have not received money from Open Society at all.
Some of the alleged terrorist “links” are laughable: Among the organizations that the reports accuses of “Directly Assisting Domestic Terrorism” are the youth-led climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement, the Movement for Black Lives, and Dream Defenders, a nonprofit founded in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder. The report, for example, targets Sunrise Movement for expressing support for Stop Cop City, a movement that protested the razing of a swath of Atlanta’s South River Forest to build a massive police training facility.
Both versions of the report repeatedly affix the term “pro-Hamas” to organizations that have simply expressed either solidarity with Palestine or criticism of Israel.
Among the Open Society grantees the reports declare are “Inciting Terrorism and Linked to Foreign Terrorist Groups” are the National Lawyers Guild, Women’s Center for Legal Assistance and Counseling, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Latinx advocacy group Mijente, the Wisconsin immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, and the Asian-American advocacy group 18 Million Rising are also designated as such. (The inclusion of 18 Million Rising on this list appears to be on the basis of a couple of Instagram posts expressing support for Palestinian resistance and calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.)
“The claims in this report are false and reckless,” a spokesperson for Open Society told Rolling Stone in a statement. “The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn all forms of violence, including terrorism. All our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are required to agree to comply with the law in order to receive funding. Our work is dedicated to strengthening American democracy and upholding human rights and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”
Soon after the Times reported that the DOJ was encouraging prosecutors to use Capital Research Center’s memo, the conservative think tank’s president spoke out publicly against the idea that their claims supported criminal charges. He told the Times he was “surprised” by the fact that the DOJ cited the report. “No administration official asked us to prepare it, nor did we suggest the administration use it,” Walter said in a statement to the paper.
In order for Open Society or either Soros to face criminal prosecution, Walter took pains to emphasize to the Times, “They have to have funded something bad and they have to have known they were funding something bad. … We actually did not make either of those claims that a prosecutor would need to make.”
Walter followed his Times interview up with an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal titled “Investigate Leftist Nonprofits — Carefully.” In it, Walter writes, “[W]e must distinguish between speech and lawbreaking. No donor or grantee should be criminally prosecuted for speech. Only those who violate laws should face legal jeopardy.”
In the same op-ed, Walter writes that “conservatives should be wary of setting any precedent for overzealous prosecutions.”
Capital Research Center did not respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone. A DOJ spokesperson responded to an inquiry about the progress of the investigation against the Soroses or Open Society, or whether there even is any investigation of the type Singh called for in his memo, by noting that they “do not comment on potential litigation or investigation.”
“The Attorney General is committed to the safety of every American,” the spokesperson added. “If organizations threaten the safety of Americans and violate U.S. law, we will pursue every lawful avenue — investigations and prosecutions to hold them accountable. Terror has no place here.”
