The billionaire investor paid “professional agitators” to organize “riots” in the US, the president has alleged
US President Donald Trump has said that his administration will be probing George Soros over his alleged funding of mass “riots” in the US.
The Hungarian-American billionaire investor and NGOs funded by his Open Society Foundations (OSF) have long been linked to various protest movements, both in the US and abroad.
“They have professional agitators… They get paid for their profession from Soros and other people,” Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends on Friday.
“We’re going to look into Soros because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people,” he added.
“This is more than protests: This is real agitation. This is riots on the street, and we’re gonna look into that,” Trump said.
The US federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act 1970) law has historically targeted organized crime, and is used to prosecute offenses committed as part of a criminal enterprise, though more recently it has seen broader use.
Last month, the US president called for the Hungarian-American investor and his son to face charges under the statute, accusing them of supporting “violent protests, and much more, all throughout the United States.”
“We’re not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America any more,” he said in a Truth Social post.
In the months prior, anti-immigration protests shook the US, with the most violent cases in Los Angeles escalating into clashes with the police, looting, and arson.
Soros was also linked to the 2016 Russiagate hoax, according to declassified documents published by the Senate Judiciary Committee in July.
The documents alleged the investor’s OSF network had ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign’s debunked attempts to accuse Trump of collusion with Russia in order to undermine his 2016 election victory – accusations Moscow has long dismissed.
