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
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.
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.
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