Billionaire financier and investor George Soros has funneled millions of dollars into a “dark money” hub that left-wing activists dip into for their Defund the Police efforts, reported Fox News.
Specifically, the Foundation to Promote Open Society (FPOS), a nonprofit in the Democratic megadonor’s network, channeled $3 million to the Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability (CRH) in 2020. This is according to the grant database of the Open Society Foundation cited by the outlet.
The Defund the Police movement emerged following the death of Minneapolis Black man George Floyd in police custody in May last year. The events triggered nationwide protests against racism and police brutality.
The Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability positions itself as a “resource for local advocates and organizers working to address the harms of policing in the US" striving to "cultivate community safety and accountability outside of the criminal legal system."
The hub offers research, reports, data, model policies, toolkits, and "other resources to the field" for local progressive activists engaged in promoting police reform, including materials on abolishing and defunding the police, says the publication. The latter purportedly includes a 24-page memo penned by CRH that "reviews alternatives to policing in the context of police abolitionist frameworks, offering insights and sharing successful strategies for advocates in the field."
Left-wing groups contributing materials include No Cop Academy, Cops Off Campus Coalition and The Digital Abolitionist.
Tax forms are cited as showing that $2 million are being used for a "budgeting Academy program" to "train community safety advocates in how to advocate around their local municipal budgets," reveal the grants, with the remaining $1 million allocated for general support.
Earlier in 2019, the Soros nonprofit dished out $1.5 million to the resource centre, with $500,000 of the sum financing the establishment of the hub itself.
George Soros, Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations leaves after his speech entitled "How to save the European Union" as he attends the European Council On Foreign Relations Annual Council Meeting in Paris, Tuesday, May 29, 2018
© AP Photo / Francois Mori
The Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability "houses and staffs" the website defundpolice.org in partnership with a spate of national movement organisations.
CRH is a sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, managed by the Washington-based consulting firm Arabella Advisors. The latter is a company that caters to left-leaning donors and nonprofits by offering financing advice.
Founded by Eric Kessler, a former administration appointee of ex-President Bill Clinton, it serves as the hub of a politically liberal "dark money" network.
Projects under the umbrella of the New Venture Fund do not have to file tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that would reveal information pertaining to board members and finances.
Nevertheless, Soros' nonprofit states the donations are channeled directly to the CRH via the New Venture Fund.
There has been no comment on the report from either the CRH or the Open Society Foundations.
Earlier, via a sum that was reportedly George Soros’s largest political donation of the 2021 election cycle, financial support worth $1 million went to the Colour Of Change PAC. The PAC positions itself as America’s largest online racial justice organisation and seeks to slash police budgets, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Billionaire "philanthropist" Soros has been criticised across the political spectrum for spending of large amounts of cash on questionable "civil society initiatives" as part of efforts to spread his vision of a “globalised, socially liberal, market-driven world order,” in effect meddling in the affairs of sovereign countries.
The hedge fund manager began his political activities in the 1980s in Eastern Europe, providing funding to anti-communist forces in Hungary, Poland, and other Eastern Bloc nations. By the 1990s, his foundations had spread into the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine and Russia, and provided support for the colour revolutions that erupted in many post-Soviet states in the 2000s and 2010s. Russia kicked Soros’ foundations out in 2015 after Moscow deemed them to be a threat to national security.
In 2018, the OSF announced it was closing its European office in Budapest, Hungary – Soros’ native country – over legislation passed by the Hungarian government targeting the foundation's activities. Hungary had passed a law, dubbed the Stop Soros bill, drafted by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, creating a new category of crime, called “promoting and supporting illegal migration."