Soros Spent $10.37 Million Lobbying During Second Quarter

Liberal billionaire George Soros's nonprofit spent more on lobbying during the second quarter of 2018 than he has in any previous quarter, disclosure forms show.

The Open Society Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit that deals with domestic and international advocacy efforts that is a separate entity from Soros's Open Society Foundations, reported spending $10.37 million between April 1 and June 30—an increase of nearly $8 million from the first quarter of the year when the center reported spending $2.52 million on its lobbying efforts.

The increase in its lobbying activities can be attributed to the group adding a number of issues related to the nomination of Donald Lu as the U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and the nomination of David B. Cornstein as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary, where Soros was born.

The group's three in-house lobbyists additionally focused on a handful of issues related to North Korea such as the Preventing Preemptive Action in North Korea Act of 2017, the No Unconstitutional Strike against North Korea Act, the North Korea Nuclear Baseline Act, and issues related to security sector assistance, North Korea, and Defense in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019.

The policy center's scope also hit bills and issues spanning from the Disclosing Foreign Influence Act to the Bill on Foreign Funded Organizations in Hungary, a crackdown on foreign-funded organizations in that country.

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