The son of Democratic megadonor George Soros has met repeatedly at the White House with a top Biden national security adviser, a pattern that suggests the Soros family has used its high-level political access to promote both their domestic and international priorities.
Alexander Soros, chairman of the board of his father’s Open Society Foundations, has met five times with Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer since December 2021, according to White House visitor logs. The most recent meeting was on Feb. 9, the same day President Biden hosted Brazil’s left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The younger Soros was accompanied by Pedro Abramovay, the director of Open Society’s Rio De Janeiro office and a former official in Lula’s previous administration.
The Soroses have been ardent supporters of Lula, who some American conservatives have criticized as "anti-American." In a major foreign speech just a week later on Feb. 16, George Soros called Lula’s election "crucial" and urged "strong international support" to advance Lula’s climate agenda in Brazil. The younger Soros was at the Munich Security Conference where his father delivered the address.
Open Society hailed Lula’s election in 2022 as "a watershed moment in the fight against authoritarian populism in Latin America."
It is not clear what Alex Soros and Finer discussed in their meetings, but they illustrate the access afforded to one of the Democratic Party’s biggest supporters. The 37-year-old Soros has given millions of dollars to Democratic groups, and contributed $726,900 to a pro-Biden committee in 2020. Soros has had a dozen other meetings with White House officials who handle domestic policy issues, according to the visitor logs. Soros and his father’s longtime spokesman, Michael Vachon, met on Feb. 10 with Jordan Finkelstein, an aide to Biden political adviser Anita Dunn. Alex Soros had previously met with former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain and Biden counselor Mariana Adame.
Through Open Society, the Soroses spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to advance a variety of left-wing causes. In the United States, they fund the movements to defund police, expand the Supreme Court, and expand environmental regulations.
Open Society spent more than $110 million in 2021 on advocacy programs in Latin America and the Caribbean, with an emphasis on Brazil. Abramovay, who reportedly advised Lula’s presidential transition, took over Open Society’s office in Rio de Janeiro in 2013.
American liberals have started to sour on Lula as he has embraced leaders in Russia and China. The Brazilian president in April accused the United States of "stimulating" the Russia-Ukraine war, remarks that drew praise from the Kremlin. Lula visited China in April, where he proposed a "peace club" led by Brazil and China to end the war in Ukraine. He lashed out at the U.S. dollar and International Monetary Fund in a speech during his Chinese junket.
George Soros, whose Brazilian ex-girlfriend once sued him for domestic abuse, was called out in 2020 by Taylor Swift for "shameless greed" after he partnered with the pop superstar’s former manager, Scooter Braun, to release an album of her songs.