A New York judge once said that a good prosecutor could “persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.” If Donald Trump truly believes that 95-year-old George Soros is an evil man who deserves to go to prison, the shaky indictment can surely be “fixed.”
It's worth dwelling on that sentence. Any doubts that the United States Department of Justice has become Trump's private tool for revenge have been dispelled by the recent indictment of James Comey. Trump has publicly demanded the prosecution of the former FBI director. The season of political trials in Washington seems to be just beginning.
Soros would be the icing on Trump's cake. Unlike others he has targeted—like Mark Milley, the former chief of staff; Jack Smith, former special counsel for Joe Biden; or Letitia James, the attorney general of New York State—Trump has not directly confronted Soros. But Soros's value as a symbolic prosecutorial target is much greater: he is hated by autocrats around the world and is seen as almost the antichrist by the right-wing MAGA movement.
Among his most vocal opponents are Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Because right-wing populism is nationalistic in nature, it takes many forms. Soros, however, is the closest the world’s autocrats have to a common, cross-border “demonic” enemy. Hundreds of human rights organizations, investigative journalists, democracy activists, and other “disobedient” individuals have received grants from Soros’s foundations.
No other philanthropist in the world can compare to Soros, who has invested $32 billion in such causes to date. The very name of his foundation - Open Society - speaks for itself. Those who prefer closed societies do not like Soros. Yes, he is a major personal donor to the Democratic Party, including to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 and 2024. But there is nothing unusual in that. If Trump really wanted to go after the billionaires who finance American elections, he would have a wide range of options.
Trump’s goal is to dismantle one of America’s largest nonprofits — to silence all the others. Last week, he ordered federal law enforcement agencies to crack down on left-wing “domestic terrorism” in the United States. He also designated “antifa” — short for “anti-fascists” — as a terrorist organization. If it really existed, antifa would probably be shredding its own records in paper shredders by now. Unfortunately (or fortunately), antifa doesn’t exist as such — it has no address, no account, and no organizational structure to prove it.
Besides being extremely irresponsible to divert anti-terrorist mechanisms to a fictional threat (not to mention the message it sends to real terrorists), all of this would be futile in a normal legal order. The United States has been plagued by numerous conspiracies and mass shootings carried out by individuals on the left - but traditionally much more so on the right. Very few of them have been associated with recognizable organizations. Hence the term "antifa" - a temporary designation for something that in the minds of supporters of the Maga movement should exist.
Soros’s foundation now looks like Trump’s replacement for antifa. While the Open Society Foundations condemns violence and does not fund groups that advocate it, the tools at Trump’s disposal are still significant. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill giving the U.S. Treasury Department the authority to eliminate tax breaks for nonprofits—a direct blow to Soros’s financial base. Trump has also declared that he has the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist. Doing so could land Soros in a long-running investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Justice Department.
I have a feeling Trump would pause before actually trying to send Soros to prison. Even by the standards of today's brutal politics, attacking a ninety-year-old Holocaust survivor would probably be a step too far.
Getting an indictment from a grand jury would be doable — because it only hears one side of the story. But getting a guilty verdict from a jury would be a far more difficult task. The ham sandwich would likely be acquitted. Judging by the blanket indictments against him, Comey might as well be acquitted. But Trump still has the power to destroy what’s left of Soros’s life and the causes he cares about.
The list of those who have received support from Soros's foundations is extremely extensive. Among them is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose scholarship at Oxford in 1989 was paid for by Soros himself. An example that no good deed goes unpunished.
Another type of beneficiary of Soros's funds is US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, who for years ran Soros's hedge fund. Soros was the top investor in Bessant's own fund, Key Square Group, in 2015, to the tune of $2 billion. The Treasury Department, which Bessant now heads, would be involved in any financial action against the Open Society Foundations.
There is no doubt that US Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kesha Patel are happy to play the role of Trump's personal "attack dogs." Both have already carried out internal, McCarthyite purges against those deemed disloyal. Besant, however, has not yet crossed that line.
As Soros and other philanthropists seek ways to protect themselves, the question of Besant's decency could prove crucial.
The text is taken from the "Financial Times"
Translation: NB
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