Cap Check: Trump Allies Exaggerate Alvin Bragg-George Soros Link
Written by djfrosty on March 26, 2023
Source: Scott Olson / Getty
Political allies of former President Donald Trump have begun attacking New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg by making false claims about his ties to political donor George Soros.
As the former president is facing an indictment from a grand jury convened by the Manhattan District Attorney, Republican politicians have initiated a stream of attacks following his lead against Bragg on social media. In a post on his TruthSocial network on Monday (March 20th), he wrote: “Alvin Bragg received in EXCESS OF ONE MILLION DOLLARS from the Radical Left Enemy of ‘TRUMP,’ George Soros.”
The attack was echoed by other right-wingers such as J.D. Vance, the freshman senator from Ohio who has been an ardent Trump supporter over the past year despite prior misgivings. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio has expressed a desire to have Bragg testify before a House committee about the investigation.
There is a link between the district attorney and Soros, who has been attacked for years by right-wing politicians and conspiracy theorists for his donations to Democratic candidates with many noting these attacks based on antisemitism as the Hungarian-born billionaire is Jewish. But an examination of campaign records shows no impropriety.
The connection dates back to when Bragg first campaigned to be district attorney. He was endorsed by the progressive criminal justice group Color of Change in 2021. The group intended to spend $1 million on voter turnout efforts for him and did not directly contribute to his campaign. Soros would donate that amount to Color of Change in May of that year, one of a number of donations that he made personally and through his Democracy PAC political action committee. Color of Change would ultimately spend $500,000 in contributions backing Bragg’s campaign, 11 percent of its $4.6 million spent during that campaign year.
“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.” It is noted that his son, Jonathan, and his wife did donate $20,000 to Bragg’s campaign directly before Bragg won the Democratic primary for the D.A.’s office in 2021.
Despite those facts, GOP politicians aren’t letting up in their attacks on Bragg. Color of Change President Rashad Robinson highlighted the racism and anti-semitism behind those smears in a thread on his Twitter account. “Make no mistake, over the next couple of days as more news about potential consequences for Trump circulates, we will see a flood of anti-Black and anti-Semitic attacks from the former President and his supporters and enablers,” he wrote last weekend.