Rolling Stone: “The report […] was riddled with errors and exaggerations.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — New reporting from Rolling Stone has exposed Capital Research Center for haphazardly producing an “absurdly exaggerated” report on George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF). The report, which was the basis for the Trump Justice Department’s slapdash investigation into OSF, is “riddled with errors and exaggerations” and “potentially defamatory,” according to the magazine.
In response, the Congressional Integrity Project released the following statement:
“Capital Research Center continues to back away from their reporting which was found to be ‘riddled with errors and exaggerations.’ This is the same organization whose conspiracy theory research was featured in the widely-debunked 2000 Mules documentary and that pushes racist stereotypes as evidence in their reporting. It’s long past time to stop trusting this right wing slop machine.”
Background:
This all comes as the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans have spent 2025 launching relentless attacks on America’s civil society organizations, using the full force of the federal government to target nonprofits and faith-based charities that serve our nation’s most vulnerable communities. These organizations provide critical services, support those most in need, and strengthen the fabric of our society. And, rather than simply undoing their cruel budget cuts that “no rational person” could support, the Trump administration is investigating the very civil society organizations that have stepped in to fill the void. Beyond being deeply unpopular, these attacks set a dangerous precedent and pose a direct threat to our democracy and to communities across the country.
Read more below:
Excerpts From Rolling Stone: The DOJ’s Messy Effort to Prosecute George Soros published earlier today.
The department now appears to have made another blunder. In September, heeding calls from the president, a senior Trump administration lawyer dispatched a memo urging government prosecutors to investigate and seek charges against liberal megadonor George Soros and his son, Alex. To support such charges, the DOJ official directed prosecutors to a just-published report from a conservative think tank, Capital Research Center.
The report in question, initially titled “Exclusive: Soros’ Open Society Gave Terrorist and Pro-Terror Groups Over $80 Million,” was riddled with errors and exaggerations. It was also, around the time the DOJ memo referencing it went out, quietly replaced online with a new version featuring a less inflammatory — and potentially defamatory — title, but many of the same errors.
After the DOJ circulated its memo encouraging government lawyers to utilize the report’s findings, Capital Research Center’s president went on a mini press tour, warning that the report did not contain the kind of evidence necessary to bring criminal charges. Since then, there has been no public mention of the DOJ’s efforts to go after Soros.
The push to prosecute Soros kicked off in August, when Trump called for the arrests of the 95-year-old billionaire and his son, who chairs Open Society’s board of directors, in a post on Truth Social. “George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America,” the president wrote.
There was no evidence to support Trump’s wild accusations, but he was not the first to level them. A few weeks before Trump’s post, in July, Scott Walter, Capital Research Center’s president, testified before the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing on “How Leftist Nonprofit Networks Exploit Federal Tax Dollars to Advance a Radical Agenda.”
Toward the end of his appearance, Walter mentioned that his organization was working on a report about George Soros which he said would show “over $80 million going to nonprofits that support terrorism.” Such contributions, he added, were “debatably not kosher under 501(c)(3) laws.”
Then, in September, the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a public appearance at a university in Utah. In the immediate aftermath of the event, Trump blamed “radical leftists,” and went on to suggest that Soros might be responsible for stirring discontent. “We’re going to look into Soros because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people because this is more than protests — this is real agitation,” the president said in an interview with Fox News.
Exactly one week after Kirk was assassinated, Capital Research Center published “Exclusive: Soros’ Open Society Gave Terrorist and Pro-Terror Groups Over $80 Million,” by a researcher named Ryan Mauro. The day the report was published, Glenn Beck hosted Mauro for an episode of his show commemorating Kirk. Mauro, Beck said, “has really done the work and come up with some smoking guns — especially on George Soros — that Donald Trump can use as RICO charges.” Mauro goes on to tell Beck about the report’s “amazing findings,” which he says will allow “President Trump … to go after Soros’ network of hate in various ways.”
Shortly thereafter, the report was included in the memo dispatched to U.S. attorney’s offices, suggesting DOJ lawyers should use the report’s allegations as the basis to open criminal cases against Open Society. Possible charges floated included racketeering, arson, wire fraud, and material support for terrorism, according to the New York Times.
The original report — which is simply text on white background, no graphics — does not resemble the more polished reports Capital Research Center usually publishes. It was later replaced with a slicker PDF with a different, considerably softer title, one that backs away from the accusation that Open Society funds “terrorist” groups. The second version, titled “Open Society, Closed Eyes: The $80 Million Soros Pipeline to Extremism,” also includes a second byline: Scott Walter, the group’s president, is listed alongside Mauro.
Both reports contain significant errors, according to Open Society, whose publicly available data Capital Research used. They incorrectly list the dates that Open Society grants were disbursed, misattribute which grants went to which organizations, and reference groups that have not received money from Open Society at all.
Some of the alleged terrorist “links” are laughable: Among the organizations that the reports accuses of “Directly Assisting Domestic Terrorism” are the youth-led climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement, the Movement for Black Lives, and Dream Defenders, a nonprofit founded in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder. The report, for example, targets Sunrise Movement for expressing support for Stop Cop City, a movement that protested the razing of a swath of Atlanta’s South River Forest to build a massive police training facility.
“The claims in this report are false and reckless,” a spokesperson for Open Society told Rolling Stone in a statement. “The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn all forms of violence, including terrorism. All our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are required to agree to comply with the law in order to receive funding. Our work is dedicated to strengthening American democracy and upholding human rights and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”
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