Liberal billionaire George Soros was at the White House late last year to meet with President Obama’s controversial top adviser on ISIS, according to the White House visitor log.
Soros, joined by top aide Michelle's Vachon and Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, met with White House ISIS czar Rob Malley late in the afternoon on October 8, 2015 in the Executive Office Building, according to a recent update of the log.
The White House did not return a request for comment on the topic of the meeting with Malley, the senior advisor to the president for the counter-ISIL campaign in Iraq and Syria.
Though Malley wouldn’t be named ISIS czar until a few weeks later, the terrorist force was almost certainly the topic of discussion at the meeting.
Krastev, the chairman of a foreign policy think tank in Europe, published an op-ed in the New York Times the day before the meeting analyzing the power struggle between Russia and the United States in Syria. Soros has been an active voice on the topic of how to handle Russia’s involvement in the campaign against ISIS.
It is unsurprising that Soros was given access to Malley. The billionaire sits on the board of trustees and is a major funder of the International Crisis Group, where Malley served as Middle East director before being tapped by the Obama administration.
It was Malley's work at the International Crisis Group that led to him being fired by the 2008 Obama campaign once it became known that he entered into direct negotiations with Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist group by the State Department.
Malley told the New York Times that he had agreed to leave the campaign "because it was becoming a distraction to me and to Senator Obama’s campaign, and to avoid any misperception—misrepresentation being the more accurate word—about the candidate’s position regarding the Islamist movement."
His critics have pointed to an "anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian bias" that is evident in much of his public writing, according to a report by NBC News.
In 2006, for example, Malley argued that Hamas’s rise to power in the Gaza Strip was "not necessarily a fatal setback" to diplomacy.
"Even on the diplomatic front, Hamas’ victory is not necessarily a fatal setback," Malley said at the time. "The Islamists’ approach is more in tune with current Israeli thinking than the [Palestinian Authority’s] loftier goal of a negotiated permanent peace ever was."
In 2002, he argued that the Israeli army had damaged medical facilities and schools using "security concerns" as a false excuse.
"The logic behind these actions appears to have less to do with furthering Israel's security than with its political goals," Malley wrote.
Malley previously served on the advisory council of J Street, a liberal fringe group that also receives funding from Soros.
This was the 13th time that Soros has officially been a guest at the White House, according to the visitor logs. Included in those meetings are trips to speak with President Obama in the Oval Office and Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing.
The billionaire, age 85, remains heavily involved in liberal politics, steering millions of dollars toward his favored groups.