Soros 'dark money' behind ads urging Republicans to impeach Trump

Soros 'dark money' behind ads urging Republicans to impeach Trump

Millions of dollars targeting GOP lawmakers in swing districts

WND Staff By WND Staff

Published November 22, 2019 at 7:54pm

https://www.wnd.com/2019/11/soros-dark-money-behind-ads-urging-republicans-impeach-trump/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=wnd-breaking&utm_campaign=breaking&utm_content=breaking

A multi-million-dollar ad blitz that features military veterans urging vulnerable Republicans in swing districts to support the impeachment inquiry into President Trump is funded by a progressive "dark money" group backed by billionaire left-wing activist George Soros.

The ads were scheduled to air this week on "Fox and Friends," a favorite show of the president, in the Washington, D.C., market and in 13 Republican-held congressional districts, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

The military veterans in the ads urge Republican representatives to "put country over politics" by holding Trump accountable for "abusing his office and risking national security for his own gain."

"Dark money" refers to political spending by non-profits that are not required to disclose their donors.

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The Daily Caller said the ads disclose they're paid for by the group Defend American Democracy. But D.C. business registration documents reveal the group is one of the many projects of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money nonprofit that received $4.5 million from Soros' Open Society Policy Center between 2012 and 2017, according to Open Secrets.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund reported receiving $52 million from a single anonymous donor in 2018. But as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, the Daily Caller noted, it is not required to disclose the identity of its donors.

Robert Maguire, a research director for the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Politico the Sixteen Thirty Fund is one of the few dark money funds that has "gone into the $100 million-plus range."

The Sixteen Thirty Fund's best known project is "Demand Justice," which spearheaded opposition to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation in 2018.

'Drop prosecution of Soros group'

A non-profit funded by Soros and the State Department in Ukraine, the Anti-Corruption Action Center, has become part of the impeachment story.

Investigative reporter John Solomon reported two witnesses who testified for the Democrats in public impeachment hearings last week pressed Ukraine to drop its investigation of the group.

George Kent, the chargé d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, requested in a letter to the Ukrainian general prosecutor's office in April 2016 that its prosecution of the Anti-Corruption Action Center be dropped, Solomon said.

And a few months later, Ukraine's new general prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, said the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch asked him not to prosecute the Anti-Corruption Action Center, among other groups.

Solomon on Friday stood by his reporting despite denials by Democratic witnesses, including Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official.

Solomon wrote that Ukrainian officials told him the U.S. diplomats' implied message to Ukrainian prosecutors "was clear: Don't target [the Anti-Corruption Action Center] in the middle of an America presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama."

"We ran right into a buzzsaw and we got bloodied," a senior Ukrainian official told Solomon.

The Ukrainian officials saw it as an unusual intervention.

"We're not normally in the business of telling a country's police force who they can and can't pursue, unless it involves an American citizen we think is wrongly accused," one official said.

Solomon reported that, ultimately, no action was taken against the Soros group and it remains thriving today.