MAGA kingpins with 'damning' dossier on George Soros reveal their next targets... and the 'smoking gun' they're using as bait
Room 2501 of the Internal Revenue Service's imposing headquarters on Constitution Avenue is to become the nerve center of Donald Trump's new effort to investigate liberal funding groups.
It is home base for the IRS criminal investigation unit, known as IRS-CI, and its members are not ordinary tax agents. They carry guns and their predecessors succeeded where all other law enforcement agents failed - by taking down notorious mobster Al Capone over his finances.
Now, President Trump wants to give IRS-CI a new mission - to investigate left-wing funding groups, including those linked to billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, 95.
The move comes ahead of nationwide 'No Kings' protests on October 18, which organizers claim will be the 'single biggest day of protest in American history.'
'This will be a Soros paid-for protest for his professional protesters,' Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas said. House Speaker Mike Johnson called it a 'hate America rally.'
Soros, a hedge fund titan and his $32billion Open Society Foundations (OSF) have poured millions into left-wing causes. The OSF is now run by his son Alex, 39, who is married to former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Trump recently said Soros is a 'bad guy' and 'should be 'in jail'. Soros denies any wrongdoing, including any links to funding political violence.
'The most logical first step to me would be looking at the tax exempt statuses of these nonprofit organizations, including Soros,' Ryan Mauro, an investigator with the conservative Capital Research Center think tank (CRC) told the Daily Mail.
'The smoking gun could be a an undisclosed bank transaction. I pivot to the tax exempt status because it's just an easier approach.'
Investor and philanthropist George Soros addresses an event at the World Economic Forum in Davos on May 24, 2022
Although no potential targets have been named the White House has dropped hints as to who else could be under the IRS spotlight, with possibilities including LinkedIn co-founder and Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman, and Indivisible, the nonprofit which backs the 'No Kings' protests.
Gary Shapley, a former IRS-CI agent who was a whistleblower in the Hunter Biden tax investigation, is expected to be promoted to lead the unit, and there is likely to be a reduction in IRS lawyers' restraining influence over who gets investigated.
The IRS involvement is part of a wider effort by the White House to crack down on financial networks it accuses of funding and organizing political violence, including nonprofits and educational institutions.
In addition to IRS investigations to strip nonprofits of tax-exempt status, there may be criminal probes by the Justice Department and FBI, surveillance by federal law enforcement agencies, and other moves by the Joint Terrorism Task Force and Department of Homeland Security.
Investigators may also use racketeering laws usually deployed against organized crime gangs, and financial investigations under anti-terror laws.
White House adviser Stephen Miller is believed to be heavily involved in the strategy, which also includes input from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Attorney General Pam Bondi in the Oval Office on October 15
In a recent statement the White House said: 'Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more.'
In the Oval Office on September 25, Trump vowed to 'identify and disrupt financial networks that fund domestic terrorism and political violence.'
He then named Soros and Hoffman.
'If they are funding these things, they're going to have some problems. Because they're agitators and they're anarchists,' Trump said.
A spokesman for Soros' network of charitable foundations said: 'Neither George Soros nor the Open Society Foundations fund protests, condone violence, or foment it in any way. Claims to the contrary are false.'
Hoffman, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.
Separately, the White House has highlighted a series of political protests in the last few years that included violence against law enforcement and incidents of vandalism at Tesla dealerships.
In doing so it named nine liberal groups, donors or fundraising organizations that it claimed helped finance or plan protests where those incidents occurred.
It is not known if they will be on the IRS list, but they included Soros's OSF and ActBlue, the funding arm of the Democratic Party, and Indivisible.
The headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service in Washington
The list also included the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, and two Jewish nonprofits that oppose Israel's war in Gaza.
All those groups have denied ever calling for violence.
Last month, Vice President JD Vance suggested two potential targets - OSF and The Ford Foundation - which he said had received 'generous tax treatment.'
Investigating groups' funding and potentially stripping them of tax-exempt status could force some of them to close down, according to nonprofit heads.
Diane Yentel, chief of the National Council of Nonprofits, said: 'Baseless criminal and civil investigations into nonprofits are not about preventing violence, they are about silencing organizations and individuals with which the administration disagrees.'
More potential targets for the newly emboldened IRS were contained in a 113-page dossier that was handed to Trump last week.
Drawn up by the Capital Research Center it focused on America's homeless services system, which the right-wing advocacy group claimed had been 'captured' by what it called radical nonprofits funneling money into political activism.
The report claimed well-funded advocacy groups with charitable tax status were diverting billions of dollars' into campaigns that push 'extremist political agendas.'
President Donald Trump and Pam Bondi are looking at the finances of left-wing funding groups
Alex Soros is married to former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin
Among the groups named in that report, in addition to OSF, were major foundations including Ford and Tides, which were accused of 'reinforcing extremist agendas' by funding legal challenges to public camping bans and police enforcement.
The Ford and Tides Foundations were among over 100 progressive organizations that recently signed a letter denouncing political violence.
They said: 'We reject attempts to exploit political violence to mischaracterize our good work.'
Also identified in the report were the National Homelessness Law Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Los Angeles Community Action Network, and the Alliance for Global Justice, which were described as 'ideological gateways' between homelessness activism and the far left.
The Daily Mail contacted the groups named in the report but received no response.
It is not known if they will now be investigated by the IRS.
Gary Shapley will head the IRS-CI unit as it looks into liberal fundraising groups
Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin in 2017 in Cambridge, MA
Hungarian-born Soros founded OSF decades ago to support democracy movements in communist and post-communist countries.
By the 1990s, it had expanded into the United States, where it bankrolls progressive causes from racial justice to climate activism.
That record has made the hedge fund billionaire a villain on the American right, which accuses him of masterminding unrest and violent protests through a sprawling web of nonprofits.
Two years ago he handed control of OSF to his son who has pledged to step up the fight against what he calls authoritarianism at home and abroad.
Last month a senior Justice Department official instructed several U.S. attorneys' offices to draft plans to investigate the OSF.
They suggested possible charges against the organization ranging from arson to material support of terrorism.
In response, the OSF said: 'These accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.
'The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law.'
