The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2016 sent $9 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to a Soros-backed group which used the money to fund far-left political activities in Albania, newly released documents show.
Important Judicial Watch obtained docs revealing the Obama Admin sent U.S. taxpayer funds overseas to a group backed by billionaire George Soros – which used the money to fund left-wing political activities benefiting the socialist government in Albania.https://t.co/K7Vhffovum
— Judicial Watch 🔎 (@JudicialWatch) April 5, 2018
According to Judicial Watch, which obtained the 32 pages of records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the American tax dollars were used to help the country’s socialist government push for highly controversial judicial “reform.” The records also provide insight into how the Soros operation “helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding.”
The new documents show that USAID funds were funneled through that agency’s Civil Society Project to back Soros’s left-wing Open Society Foundations in Albania, particularly the Soros operation efforts to give the socialist government greater control of the judiciary. USAID reportedly gave $9 million in 2016 to the “Justice for All” campaign, which is overseen by Soros’s “East West Management Institute.”
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that the Soros operation used taxpayer dollars to support the “Socialist/Communist government” of Albania.
Fitton said that the Soros group sponsored a survey to measure Albanian citizens’ knowledge, support, and expectations on justice reform and the results showed 91 percent support for the Soros operation’s position on the need for judicial reform — which would have restricted the independence of the judiciary.
“Now, like all strongman governments, they don’t like independent judiciaries, so they were trying to reform the judiciary in a way that would have brought it under the control of the Socialist government there,” Fitton explained.
The poll reportedly didn’t specify what type of “reform” the Soros group had in mind.
“What’s troubling is — obviously Soros needs no taxpayer money to do any of this advocacy work, but the State Department and USAID is [was] partnering with Soros and basically allowing Soros to set our foreign policy agenda,” Fitton explained. “And then secondly, Soros’ operations, according to these documents, were allowed to come into the State Department and provide technical reviews of other applications for other government money in Albania.”
Fitton told Tucker that with U.S. taxpayer help, Soros was also active in Romania, Hungary, Guatemala, and Colombia.
“They’re very, very active and it doesn’t take a lot of money to have a big impact in these countries and the governments are under assault from the Soros-State Department unity effort to bring socialism and stop anything in the area of reform, constitutionalism — the sort of things that Americans would be comfortable with,” he said.
Fitton noted that some of the activity was still going on in early 2017.
As PJ Media reported in March of 2017, a group of six U.S. senators led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking that he investigate the charges and asking him to launch a full-scale investigation into the Obama administration’s efforts to meddle in politics around the globe, including the use of U.S. taxpayer funds to assist Soros in Albania.
The letter said, “Foundation Open Society-Albania and its experts, with funding from USAID, have created the controversial Strategy Document for Albanian Judicial Reform. Some leaders believe that these ‘reforms’ are ultimately aimed to give the Prime Minister and left-of-center government full control over the judiciary.”
Opposition leaders in the Albanian parliament labeled the effort “a Soros-sponsored reform.”
Judicial Watch is also seeking information regarding Soros’ nefarious activities in Macedonia, Romania, and Colombia.
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