Soros bankrolls dark money hub for activists pushing to dismantle police, grants show

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Manhattan Institute's Charles Fain Lehman discuses Soros-funded prosecutors

Liberal billionaire George Soros has poured millions of dollars into a dark money hub used by far-left activists pushing to dismantle the police, grants show.

The Foundation to Promote Open Society, a nonprofit in Soros' network, pushed $3 million to the Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability (CRH) in 2020, according to a search of the Open Society Foundations' grant database. 

CRH is a clearinghouse of resources for local progressive activists on how to best deal with police reform efforts, including materials on abolishing and defunding the police. The hub sits under the umbrella of the most prominent dark money network in the U.S., tax forms show.

Hungarian-born U.S. investor and philanthropist George Soros has been bankrolling liberal causes across the globe for years. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images))

Of Soros' funding, $2 million went toward creating a "budgeting Academy program" to "train community safety advocates in how to advocate around their local municipal budgets," the grants show. The remaining $1 million was for general support.

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Soros' nonprofit previously sent $1.5 million to the resource center in 2019. Of that, $500,000 went toward establishing the hub, tax forms show.

Soros' funding of CRH is yet another instance showing how his cash funds efforts to reshape the justice system. For years, Soros has showered district attorney races with money, oftentimes backing the most progressive candidate. His nonprofit empire has devoted hundreds of millions toward racial equality, including tens of millions for local efforts for criminal justice reform. 

CRH describes itself "as a resource for local advocates and organizers working to address the harms of policing in the U.S." that seeks to "cultivate community safety and accountability outside of the criminal legal system."

The hub provides research, reports, data, model policies, toolkits and "other resources to the field" and supports campaigns with technical assistance needs, according to its website. 

Among those materials is a 24-page memo CRH wrote that "reviews alternatives to policing in the context of police abolitionist frameworks, offering insights and sharing successful strategies for advocates in the field." 

Screenshot of Community Resource Hub's Alternatives to Policing memo (Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability.)

The memo is one of more than 700 resources on the site. CRH notes that it does not necessarily support or endorse all materials in its hub. 

Several far-left groups contribute materials, including No Cop Academy, Cops Off Campus Coalition and The Digital Abolitionist, all of which provide resources marked under its "abolitionist" tab. 

Its website further shows that CRH directly works on projects concerning police defunding. The hub "houses and staffs" the website defundpolice.org in partnership with several national movement organizations.

CRH hosts weekly two-hour "invest/divest learning communities" that are attended by 40 to 60 organizers across the country focused on "Budget Advocacy, Community-Based Safety Strategies, Police Fraternal Association Contracts, and Reparations for police violence."

The hub also hosts a Defund Police Fellowship that supports 16 fellows in 13 cities with money to support organizing staff. It also "offers monthly trainings and skill building sessions, weekly office hours with budget, campaign strategy, and communications experts, and a peer mentor program," its website states.

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According to the Soros group's tax forms, CRH is a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit incubator managed by the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Arabella Advisors.

The New Venture Fund provides its tax and legal status to groups it houses, meaning that projects under its umbrella do not have to file tax forms to the IRS that would show information such as board members and financial information. 

The New Venture Fund raked in $965 million in anonymous donations in 2020, Fox News previously reported. It is one of four funds Arabella Advisors manages, along with the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund and Hopewell Fund. 

The four funds in the Arabella-managed dark money network pulled in a combined $1.6 billion in secret donations last year, tax forms show.

But while none of the funds disclose donors on their tax forms, Soros' nonprofit outright states the cash is going to the New Venture Fund to be passed off to the CRH.

George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, talks during a television interview for CNN at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. (AP)

The CRH and the Open Society Foundations did not respond to requests for comment.

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Soros' funding for the project comes on the heels of his years-long efforts to elect progressive prosecutors in dozens of cities around the country. 

"These are little-noticed offices; you don't have to spend very much money to get elected to a prosecutors' office," Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News. 

"When you do, you have an enormous influence over who actually gets prosecuted and charged with crimes," Lehman said. "You can rule out whole classes of crimes of meriting prosecution." 

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Lehman said Soros' funding helped candidates "easily grab" the prosecutor position in several cities. 

Parker Thayer, a researcher at the Capital Research Center, estimated that Soros has dropped $28 million into prosecutor races since 2015.

Soros' Open Society Foundations also devoted $220 million in 2020 to a racial equality push, which included $70 million for local efforts geared toward criminal justice reform.