Three so-called government watchdog groups have reportedly banded together to sue the Department of Homeland Security for the release the logs of visitors to the White House and to President Trump’s homes in both New York and Florida.
Unreported in the news media coverage of the lawsuit is that two of the three organizations are directly funded by billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations while the third group is the project of a fund that has financed leftist groups along with Soros.
Politico, which first reported on the news-making lawsuit, documented:
The suit, set to be filed Monday in federal court in New York, contends that the Secret Service is in violation of the law by failing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests for details on visitors to the White House and other locations where Trump has spent time since taking office.
… By filing in New York rather than in Washington, where most FOIA suits are filed, the plaintiffs may be trying to avoid having the case scuttled by a key legal precedent already on the books that sharply limits the public’s right to see logs of visitors to the White House complex.
The three organizations that filed the complaint are the National Security Archive, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government (CREW), which Politico notes was also involved in a Bush-era lawsuit for government records.
The National Security Archive documents on the “funders and support” section of its website that it is funded by Soros’s Open Society Institute as well as the Open Society Fund, Inc.
CREW, the second group that is party to the visitor logs lawsuit, describes itself as an organization that utilizes “high-impact legal actions to target government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests.”
CREW, which does not publicize its donor list, has received financing from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. According to Discover the Networks, CREW has also been funded by the Soros-financed Tides Foundation.
In August 2014, longtime Hillary Clinton ally David Brock, founder of the heavily Soros-financed Media Matters for America progressive group, was elected chairman of CREW’s board.
Brock departed the organization last December, but Politico reported in January that CREW is part of a network of groups for which the activist is attempting to raise $40 million to take on Trump.
Also in January, CREW filed a lawsuit claiming that Trump is in violation of a Constitutional clause banning government officials from accepting benefits from foreign nations.
The third organization suing for the visitor logs is the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The Institute, a $60 million effort, was launched last year by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation together with Columbia University.
Numerous Knight Foundation projects are also financed by Soros. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin, for example, was also the recipient of a $270,000 grant from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. The Knight Foundation and the Open Society both fund the ProPublica journalism project. The two charities are also founding sponsors of the New Americans Campaign, which says it seeks to “help modernize naturalization assistance in the United States and help more lawful permanent immigrants become U.S. citizens.”
Since Trump took office, Soros-financed groups have been leading a constant effort to thwart the U.S. president’s policies, as this reporter has thoroughly documented.
In one of many examples, tomorrow a coalition of activist groups plans to hold a massive anti-Trump Tax March in Washington and at least 60 other locations. Unreported by much of the news media is that most of the listed partners and support organizers of the march are openly financed by Soros or have close links to Soros financing.
One Tax March organizer is the recently-formed Indivisible Project, which has been helping to lead anti-Trump activism nationwide. Breitbart News extensively reported that Indivisible leaders are openly associated with groups financed by Soros.
Soros reportedly also has ties to more than 50 “partners” of the anti-Trump Women’s March that was held the day after Trump’s inauguration. Also, this journalist first reported on the march leaders’ own close associations with Soros.
In February, Breitbart News reported a Soros-financed group distributed an actual script with anti-Trump talking points for citizens to use when meeting with constituents in town halls, including during last week’s Congressional recess.
The script provided word-for-word language suggestions that accuse the Trump administration of “xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia.” It asked activists to use the descriptors to petition their representatives to “forcefully condemn” and support legislation opposing Trump’s immigration and border security agendas.
In January, immigration lawyers from groups financed by Soros, a champion of open border policies, were signatories to a lawsuit that successfully blocked Trump’s original executive order halting visas for 90 days for “immigrants and non-immigrants” from Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Iran, and Iraq.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
With research by Brenda J. Elliott.
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