Before it was shuttered, USAID routed funds to Soros-aligned causes, terrorists and drag queens

Before the Trump administration closed USAID’s doors, the agency regularly routed funding to causes aligned with George Soros’ nonprofit empire, terrorists and drag queens. 

The agency came under scrutiny from the new administration over failures to ensure transparency in its funding to organizations across the globe and concerns that the leadership was not responding to explicit policy directives from the State Department and the wider executive branch to align its programs with Trump policies and the U.S. national interest. 

In recent days, the Trump administration identified USAID programs ranging from contraceptives for Afghanistan to LGBT diversity programs for European countries as clear evidence that foreign aid needed to be paused and reevaluated, a task that fell to the Rubio State Department. 

The development agency for years also funneled money to several nonprofit groups that also received substantial backing from components of George Soros’ empire. Some previously came under scrutiny during the Obama administration for “democracy promotion” and judicial reform efforts in European countries that critics claimed promoted leftist politics. 

For example, U.S. government spending records show that the East-West Management Institute, which is in part backed by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, received more than $260 million over the years in grants from USAID to, among other things, promote the rule of law in Georgia, strengthen civil society in Uganda, and advance Serbia’s accession talks with the European Union. 

That same nonprofit group came under scrutiny during the Obama administration after Judicial Watch uncovered government records and communications showing that the East-West Management Institute’s “Justice for All” campaign in Albania received $9 million in funding from USAID. 

The assistance concerned several GOP Senators, who sent a letter to the newly appointed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017, alleging the campaign funded by the U.S. government helped craft an Albanian judicial reform proposal that may “give the Prime Minister and left-of-center government full control over the judiciary.” 

Those same Senators also raised concerns about a similar Soros-backed program in neighboring Macedonia where they said a local affiliate called Foundation Open Society-Macedonia received backing from USAID through the Open Society Foundations and pushed “a progressive agenda.” 

Other Soros-backed organizations that received funding from both his Open Society Foundations network and USAID include the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine and Transparency International. 

According to the group's own records, the Anti-Corruption Action Center began receiving funding from USAID the same year the Maidan Revolution overthrew Ukraine’s elected, Russian-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych. The group, by its own admission, was heavily critical of Yanukovych’s government and ministers, which aligned with U.S. State Department policy at the time. During the 2014 Maidan Revolution, then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland visited Ukraine and was recorded on a leaked phone call discussing how the United States could influence the formation of a new government in Kyiv. 

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations did not respond to a request for comment. 

After temporarily shutting down USAID operation, the Trump administration defended the move, citing other left-wing causes that received funding grants from the agency. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt highlighted several when speaking with reporters on Monday, including $1.5 million for diversity measures in Serbia, $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru, and $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland.

House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., also flagged other examples of USAID funding, including $15 million for condoms sent to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and over $3 million for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean.” 

The government watchdog overseeing the agency also warned USAID’s leadership in a stinging January memo that it had created serious "vulnerabilities" by doling out billions of tax dollars to overseas countries and groups without fulling vetting for terrorists. That inspector general’s report also determined that USAID grants were being insufficiently monitored. 

In one egregious example, a Syrian national was charged by the Justice Department last year for diverting more than $9 million worth of humanitarian aid paid for by USAID to a designated terrorist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq. 

The suspect, Mahmoud Al Hafyan, was the head of a Syrian nongovernmental organization that employed 160 individuals and was awarded $122 million by USAID between January 2015 and November 2018, according to the Justice Department. That money was designated to pay for food kits for Syrian refugees fleeing conflict zones. 

During this contract, the Justice Department alleges Al Hafyan worked with co-conspirators to funnel “millions” in food kits on the black market to the Al-Nusra Front, a local Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that is also designated a terrorist organization by the United States. 

The USAID inspector general warned about the limits on the agency’s ability to monitor expenditures for programs in “nonpermissive” environments, like the conflict zones in Syria, meaning what happened there could happen in other places, like Ukraine or Gaza, where there are similar international or local organizations operating that are recipients of U.S. cash. 

In another example, food aid in Ethiopia was diverted to warring armies in the Tigray region. According to reporting from Reuters, the UN’s World Food Program — a close partner of USAID — was aware that aid was being stolen from its programs for years before the discovery. In all, thousands of tons of USAID-funded grain shipments meant to feed the hungry in the midst of the civil conflict were diverted.