George Soros denied he donated to the campaign for Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted former President Donald Trump, despite the left-wing billionaire handing $1 million to a political action committee that later supported Bragg. Soros told Semafor on Friday he "did not...
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How much money did Soros give Bragg?
“Alvin Bragg is bought and paid for by George Soros and has repeatedly showed his hatred for President Trump based on purely political motives."
— Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, in
a Twitter post on Saturday
These claims are exaggerated.
While the link between Mr. Bragg and Mr. Soros exists, arguments that the district attorney was “bought” by the philanthropist are misleading.
Mr. Bragg
announced his candidacy for the position in June 2019. Nearly two years later, on May 8, 2021, the political arm of Color of Change, a progressive criminal justice group,
endorsed him. It pledged to spend $1 million on direct mailers, on-the-ground campaigning, and voter turnout efforts on his behalf. (It did not donate to Mr. Bragg’s campaign directly.) A few days later, on May 14, Mr. Soros
contributed $1 million to the group, which intended to help Mr. Bragg with the money.
Color of Change did not meet its pledge. It eventually spent nearly $500,000 in support of Mr. Bragg. That amounted to about 11 percent of the group’s
$4.6 million in total spending during the 2021-22 election cycle, according to the campaign finance website Open Secrets.
A spokeswoman for the political arm of Color of Change said that the group reviewed and interviewed reform-minded district attorney candidates each election cycle and that the process was independent of funders. Mr. Soros was just one of many large donors to the group. Past donors included
members of the wealthy Pritzker family,
the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and
the hip-hop group the Beastie Boys.
Mr. Bragg was not the only candidate Color of Change endorsed and aided through organizing efforts in 2021. The group also helped
re-elect Larry Krasner, the district attorney of Philadelphia, by contacting more than 300,000 voters and sending nearly 200,000 pieces of direct mail on his behalf. In addition, it operated phone banks, ran advertisements and mobilized voters to support a local candidate in Virginia and a ballot initiative in Minneapolis.
Nor was Mr. Soros’s $1 million contribution particularly unusual. Mr. Soros gave to the group multiple times before it endorsed Mr. Bragg; he personally donated
$450,000 between 2016 and 2018, and his political action committee, Democracy PAC,
gave $2.5 million in 2020.
Neither Mr. Soros nor Democracy PAC contributed directly to Mr. Bragg’s campaign, according to Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Mr. Soros.
“George Soros and Alvin Bragg have never met in person or spoken by telephone, email, Zoom, etc.,” Mr. Vachon said. “There has been no contact between the two.”
Mr. Vachon also noted that Mr. Soros had been open about his yearslong support of progressive prosecutors. In
a 2022 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Soros explained his thoughts on overhauling the criminal justice system and wrote that “the idea we need to choose between justice and safety is false.”
“I have supported the election (and more recently the re-election) of prosecutors who support reform,” he wrote. “I have done it transparently, and I have no intention of stopping.”
Linda Qiu is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017 from the fact-checking service PolitiFact.
@ylindaqA version of this article appears in print on March 24, 2023, Section A,
like I said you liars just keep on proving how bad the republicans are ... they lie about everything they do just to get your vote to try and stay in power ... when you vote for a republican you're voting for liars ...
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