Who is George Soros, the famed philanthropist under attack?
By Auzinea Bacon, CNN
(CNN) — Billionaire investor George Soros, whose left-leaning donations have triggered criticism from right-wingers for years, has long been painted as “the puppet master and the extreme left-wing manipulator,” as he once sarcastically described himself.
Most of the conspiracy theories involving Soros, 95, have also targeted his nonprofit, Open Society Foundations, which was founded decades ago and is now chaired by his son, Alex Soros. Among the accusations against the Soros-led organization are claims by President Donald Trump that it funds violent protesters.
The vitriol against George Soros resurfaced in the Oval Office on Thursday, when Trump told reporters he thought Soros was a “likely candidate” for an investigation just days after he instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, California Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Leticia James.
“If you look at Soros, he’s at the top of everything,” Trump added. “He’s in every story that I read, so I guess he’d be a likely candidate.”
Trump’s comments weren’t out of the blue. In August, he said George and Alex Soros should be charged with racketeering.
“George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with (violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Trump’s justice department cited a report from conservative watchdog group Capital Research Center, titled “Exclusive: Soros’ Open Society gave $80 million to pro-terror groups.”
“The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law,” the group said in a statement on its website, calling such accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society.”
Donations from Soros
The foundation is a predominantly left-leaning nonprofit. To date, it has spent more than $24 billion, of which $1.2 billion was spent in 2024.
Much of its funding has gone toward “working on access to education and health care, racial justice, drug policy reform, and expanding human rights,” as well as addressing climate change and authoritarianism, according to its website.
The foundation’s network has worked in more than 100 countries, according to Soros’ website. His first donation, according to the site, was giving scholarships to Black South Africans under apartheid in 1979 and, in the 1980s, he funded academic visits to the West for Eastern European dissidents countering communism.
Soros, who has long been a funder of the Democratic Party, donated $125 million to one liberal super PAC in 2021, according to campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets. But wealthy Americans making political contributions is nothing new, and Republicans have their own megadonors, such as Charles Koch, Miriam Adelson and Timothy Mellon.
“Though I am often painted as the representative of the far left — and I am certainly not free of political bias — I recognize that the other side is half right in claiming that the government is wasteful and inefficient and ought to function better,” Soros said during 2011 remarks at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank co-founded by Koch.
In 2020, Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society awarded $150,000 to the Cato Institute, according to the Open Society Foundations’ searchable database. The grant was “to help build a national consensus to end qualified immunity and other policies that undermine victims of police misconduct and police accountability.”
The interesting case of Scott Bessent
Trump has called Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “one of the most brilliant men on Wall Street.”
But before serving as one of Trump’s most prominent campaign fundraisers and heading the Treasury Department, Bessent was the managing partner of Soros Fund Management’s London office from 1991 to 2000. He later returned to work for Soros as chief investment officer from 2011 to 2015.
Bessent left in 2015 and received a $2 billion investment from Soros to start his own hedge fund, Key Square Group.
“(Bessent) likened President Trump to his former boss, George Soros, saying that they had similar characteristics and behaviors,” said Bloomberg News tech journalist Ed Ludlow, citing sources who heard Bessent’s question-and-answer session at the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Idaho in July.
What Trump allies have said about Soros
In May 2023, an X user defended Soros as having good intentions, which are criticized by those who disagree with his politics, after Elon Musk posted that “Soros reminds me of Magneto,” the comic book villain. Musk responded to the user: “You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”
Musk, who campaigned for Trump in 2024, is hardly the lone critic of Soros.
“No other person has undermined our democracy more than George Soros,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on X on March 19, 2023. “Why is (he) still allowed to maintain his citizenship?”
Soros is frequently maligned as a “globalist” who secretly manipulates international finance, which many interpret as antisemitism. An episode of “Tucker Carlson Originals” that aired on Fox News in 2022 was titled “Hungary vs. Soros: The Fight for Civilization.”
“Unlike the threats from the Soviets and the Ottoman empire, the threat posed by George Soros and his nonprofit organizations is much more subtle and hard to detect,” Carlson says in the episode.
Soros makes a fortune on Wall Street
Soros, a Hungarian native born in 1930, moved to London after surviving the Nazi occupation of his home country. He would later graduate from the London School of Economics in 1952 and then move to the United States in 1956 to embark on a highly successful career in finance.
In 1970, he launched his hedge fund, Soros Fund Management, which contributed to the bulk of his wealth. In 1973, he partnered with Jim Rogers to co-found the Quantum Fund, a highly successful hedge fund that profited off currency devaluations.
In 1992, Soros drew heightened attention for “Black Wednesday,” when he collected an estimated $1 billion in profits from betting against the pound.
In a 1994 interview with PBS’ Charlie Rose, Soros said he had roughly $100 million when he became a philanthropist in 1979.
Soros has a net worth of $7.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In 2017, he contributed a whopping $18 billion to Open Society Foundations. It brought his total giving since 1984 to $32 billion, according to the nonprofit’s website.
“I occupy an exceptional position. My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people. This obliges me to take stands on controversial issues when others cannot, and taking such positions has itself been a source of satisfaction,” Soros said in a 2011 essay published in The New York Review of Books.
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