USAID and George Soros’ Foundation bankrolled a news outlet that spurred the first Trump impeachment
OCCRP also targeted Republicans and a scholar at The Heritage Foundation.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has partnered with the Open Society Foundations, the funding network established by Hungarian American billionaire George Soros, to bankroll a news organization that attacks conservatives and seems to have inspired the first impeachment of President Donald Trump.
USAID has received renewed scrutiny in recent weeks after Trump paused U.S. funding for foreign countries and appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio acting administrator at USAID. SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, has helped the administration highlight USAID’s funding for woke projects. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has highlighted $1.5 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia.
Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger has highlighted USAID’s funding for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a news outlet that also receives funding from Soros’ Open Society Foundations and that has attacked conservatives.
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The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project does not hide its Open Society Foundations funding. Its 2023 annual report lists both Open Society Foundations and USAID as contributors.
Attacks on Conservatives
In 2017, the news organization attacked Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.; Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah; and Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project published a story claiming that “Macedonia’s scandal-plagued nationalists” had “lobbied America’s right and pulled them into an anti-Soros crusade.”
Smith, Lee, and Gonzalez had made the mistake of noticing that the U.S. Embassy to Macedonia had selected Soros’ Open Society Foundations as the main implementer for USAID projects in the Eastern European country. In February 2017, USAID awarded a $2.54 million contract to the foundation for training in “civic activism,” “mobilization,” and “civic engagement.”
Speaking to The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday, Gonzalez called the attack “completely egregious.”
“Why am I paying through my tax dollars for a foreign operation to attack me?” he asked. “Why is a foreign operation attacking domestic political actors on behalf of the U.S. government?”
He said it attacked him “because we disagree with the Left.”
“They have set up this thing that targets us and we pay for it,” he added.
The First Trump Impeachment
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project also played a pivotal role in the first Trump impeachment.
As Shellenberger pointed out, the House of Representatives impeached Trump after a White House whistleblower claimed that Trump had abused his powers by threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine in order to dig up dirt on a potential rival, then former Vice President Joe Biden. The whistleblower, a CIA analyst, claimed to have heard from White House staff that Trump had directed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to work with Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter.
The CIA analyst relied on reporting an Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project report titled “Meet the Florida Duo Helping Giuliani Investigate for Trump in Ukraine.” Shellenberger cited a report from Drop Site News that the whistleblower’s complaint cited the report four times.
Shellenberger also cited a 2024 documentary from the German television broadcaster NDR. In that documentary, a USAID official confirmed that USAID approves the crime and reporting project’s “annual work plan” and approves new hires of “key personnel.”
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project vehemently denied the claim that USAID has control over the outlet.
“The claim by Dropsite News and partner media that USAID has control over editorial appointments has been disproven and we suggest you read our response to that,” Miranda Patrucic, the editor-in-chief of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, told Shellenberger.
Yet Shellenberger said the OCCRP did not provide evidence disproving the claim.
In a thread on X, OCCRP responded to a claim that USAID had paid for the Giuliani story.
“This is untrue,” the outlet stated. “OCCRP has over 40 separate donors who pay for our work.”
The outlet did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about its ties to USAID and Open Society Foundations. It did not respond to questions about its apparent anti-conservative bias or its role in the first Trump impeachment.
Open Society Foundations
As for Soros, the Hungarian American billionaire has funded a bevy of leftist causes, from DEI to gender ideology to climate alarmism. Open Society Foundations, the nonprofit organization he founded and which his son Alex currently runs, has a long history of partnering with USAID.
“[Former President Joe] Biden’s USAID and George Soros’ Open Society Institute frequently partnered by co-funding joint programs that promoted radical social agendas throughout the developing world,” Max Primorac, former acting chief operating officer at USAID, told The Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday. Primorac served at USAID from February 2018 to January 2021.
Former USAID Administrator Samantha Power met with Open Society Foundations at least twice and with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at least five times between 2021 and 2023, Fox News Digital reported. Foundations in the Open Society umbrella have worked with USAID for decades. In 2001, the Soros foundations network listed USAID among its “donor partners,” alongside other government aid agencies in countries such as Britain, Sweden, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.
The Open Society Foundations’ connections with USAID run so deep, an Open Society nonprofit actually sued USAID not once but twice—and both cases reached the Supreme Court. Alliance for Open Society International sued to oppose a USAID funding requirement that nonprofits receiving tax dollars pledge to oppose prostitution.
As I expose in my book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” the Open Society Foundations is part of the Left’s dark money network that funnels millions of dollars to the far-left nonprofits that staffed and advised the Biden administration. Biden awarded Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom last month.
This story was originally published by The Daily Signal.
