Joe Biden's transition team includes several people affiliated with organizations bankrolled by the left-wing billionaire George Soros.
Biden's "Agency Review Teams," which include lists of individuals "responsible for understanding the operations" of each government agency, will prepare "President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris ... to hit the ground running on Day One." Soros is well represented on those lists.
Sarah Cross, an advocacy director at Soros's Open Society Foundations, received a seat on Biden's State Department transition team. Michael Pan, a special adviser in the executive office of the Open Society Foundations, will join the United States Mission to the United Nations team. Diane Thompson, who is listed as "self-employed" and a member of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau team, is a current Leadership in Government Fellow at the Open Society Foundations.
Soros poured more than $70 million into election activity backing Biden's candidacy this past cycle, more than three times his previous high of $22 million in the 2016 election cycle. Soros and the Democracy Alliance donor club previously enjoyed close access to the Obama administration; under a Biden administration, that access will likely return.
Other members of Biden's transition team work for groups that receive heavy funding from the billionaire. Sharon Burke and Viv Graubard, both at the New America think tank, will join Biden's Department of Defense and Department of Labor teams. Soros's Open Society Foundations gave New America more than $1 million last year, according to the group's disclosures. Soros's son, Jonathan, sits on New America's board emeriti.
Biden's team also includes six employees from John Podesta's Center for American Progress who are sprinkled across the Treasury, Federal Reserve, Department of Labor, Department of the Interior, National Security Council, and Office of the United States Trade Representative. Soros's most recent tax forms show that nonprofits in his sprawling network gave more than $1 million to Podesta's group in 2018.
Finally, three people from the Center for Strategic and International Studies and two from the Roosevelt Institute received seats on Biden's team. Both groups recently received hundreds of thousands from Soros's nonprofits.
The Democracy Alliance, a network of millionaire and billionaire donors of which Soros is a cofounder, mapped out a $275 million spending blitz against President Donald Trump for the 2020 elections, according to confidential documents previously obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Vox described the Democracy Alliance as the "closest thing that exists to a 'left-wing conspiracy'" in the United States.
The network is led by Gara LaMarche, the former director of U.S. programs for Soros's Open Society Foundations, and helps steer the billionaire's agenda.
Biden's campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the Soros-tied individuals on the transition team.