Trump’s DOJ Demands Its Attorneys Come Up With Charges It Can File Against Soros, a Longtime Bogeyman of the Right

Sep 25, 2025

Donald Trump has been busy exploiting the assassination of Charlie Kirk to pursue a general crackdown on his political opposition. Now we see how this is taking shape: a new Justice Department campaign of legal harassment against left-leaning nonprofit organizations, particularly focusing on longtime right-wing bogeyman George Soros.

The New York Times reports:

A senior Justice Department official has instructed more than a half dozen U.S. attorneys’ offices to draft plans to investigate a group funded by George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor who President Trump has demanded be thrown in jail.
The official’s directive, a copy of which was viewed by The New York Times, goes as far as to list possible charges prosecutors could file, ranging from arson to material support of terrorism. The memo suggests department leaders are following orders from the president that specific people or groups be subject to criminal investigation—a major break from decades of past practice meant to insulate the Justice Department from political interference.
Mr. Soros began his global grant network, now known as the Open Society Foundations, decades ago to fund democratic initiatives around the world, particularly in communist and formerly communist countries. In the 1990s, the organization expanded its work to the United States. It provides grants to groups that work for human rights, democracy and equity, but Mr. Trump and some Republicans contend, without providing evidence, that it is a shadowy network promoting civil unrest, violent protests and property destruction. Liberals say the assertions are falsehoods aimed at stifling dissent. …
After Mr. Kirk’s killing this month, Mr. Trump sharply criticized the “radical left,” singling out Mr. Soros’s foundation and urging that he be put behind bars. Mr. Soros is “a bad guy” who “should be put in jail,” he told NBC News.

Notice that the origin of this investigation is not any specific criminal act, because there is no evidence of one. The origin is Trump’s desire to target an organization that opposes him, and he has instructed his minions at the Department of Justice to go searching for a crime.

This is the way things work in a dictatorship. As Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, famously said: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” A dictatorship does not start with evidence of a crime and then look for its perpetrator. It starts by selecting a target, then invents an offense as a pretext for his persecution.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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