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Control The Airwaves Control The People!  Foreign George Soros  and Son Alex Soros Rebel Rousers Insurrectionists Trojan Horse Take Over Radio Waves In America And World!

The George Soros radio deal that has the GOP in uproar

ByGabe Kaminsky

October 21, 2024 8:00 am George Soros, the “kingmaker of chaos,” has done it again.

Weeks before the 2024 election, the Democratic megadonor has notched a victory in his endless pursuit to gain influence over the news media landscape in the United States. In a 3-2 vote sending shockwaves throughout the Republican Party, the Federal Communications Commission in September allowed a nonprofit group funded by Soros to take control over radio giant Audacy after the company went bankrupt.

The deal places the Soros family, namely Alex Soros, the 38-year-old son of George Soros, at the top of a media empire that houses more than 200 radio stations. Alex Soros sits on the board of the Fund for Policy Reform, the group now overseeing Audacy through a labyrinth of corporations. The four-person board of trustees also includes Soros spokesman Michael Vachon, attorney Maryann Canfield at Soros Fund Management (the firm that bought Audacy’s debt), and Leonard Benardo, a top staffer for the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations philanthropy empire.

But, in the telling of Republicans on Capitol Hilland within the FCC’s ranks, as well as top conservative media insiders who spoke with the Washington Examiner, the Audacy deal is a big sham.

The acquisition of the radio stations, Republicans say, was “fast-tracked” to benefit a billionaire Democrat keen to help the Biden-Harris administration. Doing so, FCC member Brendan Carr said in an interview, is “unprecedented.”

Conservative criticism of the FCC’s handling of the Audacy deal also stems from a deeper and more fundamental frustration with the “philanthropy” of Soros, which has positioned him to be a dominant force in media as the Right raises increasing concerns over digital “censorship.”

Soros, 94, bankrolls “progressive” causes and the Democratic Party’s top brass. Along with other left-wing billionaires, Soros, with his money, helps keep the lights on at groups plausibly accused of censoring conservative voices online. Audacy’s portfolio includes right-leaning programs, such as Miami’s Radio Libre,a Spanish-language AM radio station, andMissouri’s KFTK-FM, FCC documents show.

“What you now have,” said David D. Smith, the executive chairman of the Sinclair Broadcast Group media conglomerate, “is a left-wing Looney Tune who has access to millions of people in every market in the United States of America.”

“That’s scary,” he added.

Mark Levin views the acquisition as a manifestation of Soros’s goal “to control as much of the airwaves as possible.” George Soros isn’t doing this because he’s a public interest citizen,” Levin, one of the most prominent right-leaning talk radio hosts, told the Washington Examiner. “He’s doing this because he’s power-hungry. The guy is an ideologue with billions of dollars. He puts his money where his mouth is.”

George Soros, the founder of the Open Society Foundations, attends the European Council on Foreign Relations Annual Council Meeting on May 29, 2018, in Paris. Soros’s ties to the Audacy transaction are raising concerns among Republicans. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

‘Money where his mouth is’

Audacy, which declined to comment for this story, is the second-largest radio broadcaster in the U.S. after iHeartMedia. It is based in Philadelphia and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas in January to cut its debt by 80%, a product of slower advertising.

Six weeks later, Soros came to the rescue. The man who “broke the Bank of England” spotted a fire sale for a product with enormous reach.Soros Fund Management, his New York-based hedge fund, acquired over $400 million in Audacy’s top-tier debt — which is borrowed money a company must repay first should it go out of business. What that means is Soros Fund Management emerged as the largest shareholder in Audacy overnight.Then in comes the FCC, an independent agency that regulates interstate and international communications by television, radio, wire, cable, and satellite. The commission must oversee the Audacy transaction, and in September, it signed off on it. Doing so handed control of reorganized Audacy to the Fund for Policy Reform, which Soros finances, through a network of companies it is involved with. It also allowed Audacy to emerge from bankruptcy.

Laurel Tree Opportunities Corporation, which is controlled by a separate corporation called FPR Capital Holdings, received the FCC’s blessing to take a leading stake in the new Audacy, according to FCC documents. The Fund for Policy Reform manages FPR Capital, documents reveal.

But the FCC has landed itself in hot water with congressional investigators and two of its own commissioners, Carr and Nathan Simington, over the deal. That’s because, according to Republicans, the FCC “fast-tracked” it by bypassing standard procedure.

‘The cat’s out of the bag’

Here is how. As part of a public interest and national security review process, the FCC reviews every transfer of broadcast licenses. Among the FCC’s considerations are overseas ties because it has a rule against transferring licenses to entities with over 25% foreign ownership.

Audacy filed a petition with the FCC, noting that as it was calculated at the time, the company would emerge from bankruptcy with 25% or more in foreign ownership, according to FCC documents.

Therefore, Audacy told the FCC that the broadcaster would issue “special warrants” of debt to certain foreign ownership interests before the licenses were granted — temporarily dropping Audacy below the 25% threshold. That maneuver paved the way for the FCC to push through the deal without a preliminary review.

Then, the radio broadcaster told the regulator it would accept a foreign ownership review willingly, according to the FCC. But the regulator said it was fine to conduct the review after the licenses were already issued — a point of major tension for the GOP.

Carr warns the review, which is intended to ensure there are no national security problems with the foreign ties, could take up to six months. Worse, Republicans say, the intentionally convoluted transaction means the broadcaster will resume having over 25% foreign ownership in equity when all is said and done.

The GOP is also concerned about not knowing what foreign interests are linked to the deal before its approval since that matter is investigated during the review process.

“The Soros-backed applicants say that they will exceed the 25% benchmark,” Carr told the Washington Examiner. “Rather than requiring them to go through the normal process that the commission codified in federal law, the commission waived those rules for the first time ever. Other than the applicants saying that they will issue ‘special warrants’ in the near term, I have no idea whether those foreign entities will, in fact, be walled off.”

Seen above is a visual representation of the Soros-linked Audacy transaction. (Capital Research Center using i2 Analyst’s Notebook)

Simington, a Republican, agrees.

“Substantively, and as here admitted by the petitioner, the resulting foreign ownership interests would exceed 25% on a fully exercised basis,” said Adam Cassady, a senior legal adviser to Simington.

The FCC said in a statement: “A full foreign-ownership review will still take place after the company emerges from bankruptcy.”

The regulator called the GOP’s claim that the process was fast-tracked “false,” pointing to license transfers in past years related to Cumulus Media, iHeart Media, Liberman Television, and other companies. Carr says these examples, however, were bureau-level and thus separate from commission-level decisions he would be involved with directly.

Like Carr, Michigan State University law professor Adam Candeub sees the regulator’s reasoning on the delay of the review as counterintuitive. The national security review should have been conducted before the FCC’s granting of the Audacy licenses, Candeub said.

“The cat’s out of the bag,” said Candeub, a former top Commerce Department official who also used to advise the FCC. “They don’t have the power to undo the deal. That’s not going to happen. That’s never happened.”

‘Control the public square’

The Audacy deal devolved into an ugly game of politics, conservative media insiders say.

“This administration is too politicized, and they put too many political animals into agencies,” John Catsimatidis, a Republican megadonorand talk radio host in New York, told the Washington Examiner. “They’re doing whatever they want.” 

Now, the circumstances that culminated in the purported “fast-track” are under investigationby GOP members of Congress, including House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY). To Comer, as well as Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and other lawmakers, the “fast-track” came to fruition thanks to left-wing FCC members giving preferential treatment to an aligned megadonor: Soros.

Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, speaks during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing to examine the FCC on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 24, 2020. (Alex Wong/Pool via AP)

Since 2015, Soros has made over $230 million in political donations as his philanthropy, the Open Society Foundations, disbursed billions of dollars for left-of-center causes. His son, Alex Soros, who is now in charge of the Open Society Foundations, has also emerged as a major political donor and confidant for Democrats — scoring frequent meetings with White House officials and lawmakers.

In a September letter on Audacy to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, Comer and Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY) said they were looking into the agency’s “apparent attempt … to interfere in the 2024 election and politicize the work of the FCC.”

Rosenworcel replied in October and insisted to the lawmakers that the FCC followed standard procedure. Some Republicans argue the “Soros shortcut” deal will fuel a “censorship machine.”

That fear stems from a political climate that, Republicans say, originates from billionaire Democrats such as Soros funding efforts to suppress disfavored speech. Soros and the U.S. government have both backed the Global Disinformation Index, a British group pressuring advertisers to defund right-of-center news outlets, and a host of other entities that have faced congressional scrutiny for alleged “censorship” efforts, the Washington Examinerreported. Meanwhile, reporting from the “Twitter Files” also helped ignite concerns among Republicans about the role the government has played in recent years in conjunction with private entities to seemingly censor speech related to hot-button political and social issues.

Mark Levin speaks during an event to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Attorney General Edwin Meese in the White House on Oct. 8, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Levin called Soros a “sugar daddy” for Democrats who got a sweetheart deal.

“It’s just rotten to the core,” Levin said, accusing the FCC of cutting corners and “bastardizing the entire process.”

“They did it before the election because they want to affect the election,” Levin said. “One of the stations he is acquiring is the old WCAU, which is now WPHT in Philadelphia. That’s one of the original radio stations that got a license in all of the United States. This is not a flash in the pan. Soros is power hungry, and the more they can centralize communication, the more they can control the public square, the more they are going to do it.”

Reed Rubinstein, a former deputy associate U.S. attorney general, agrees that the transaction appears to be a means through which Soros can “gain control over the media ecosystem” thanks to the FCC skirting its rules.

“I think the Soros group’s view is that within a relatively short period of time, you know, four years, five years, they are going to shut down the conservative voices,” said Rubinstein, now the senior vice president at a group called America First Legal that is investigating the FCC over the deal.

The Open Society Foundations did not reply to requests for comment.

‘The art of the conservative billionaire’

The Audacy transaction, a sore subject for Republicans, has also left some on the Right wondering why their own megadonors are not more aggressively getting involved in the media space — like Soros and left-wing billionaires.

To this cohort, it’s high time for more Republicans to fund media operations to create change rather than backing dormant foundations that release policy white papers and sit on large assets for decades.

Two years ago, the Right was in uproar as the Soros-backed Latino Media Network purchased Spanish-language radio stations from TelevisaUnivision for tens of millions of dollars. The Soros-backed Fund for Policy Reform has notably funneled large sums to Courier Newsroom, which manages “fake news” websites behind “a coordinated effort with deep ties to Democratic political operatives,” according to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets watchdog group.

In 2022, Soros Fund Management invested in Crooked Media, a company founded by ex-Obama aides that distributes the popular left-wing Pod Save America podcast, Varietyreported.

“It’s a fundamental issue of billionaires working in this country who are conservative choosing not to engage in a platform that could, if used properly, influence public opinion,” Smith, the Sinclair Broadcast Group executive chairman, told the Washington Examiner.

Smith bought the Baltimore Sun, Maryland’s largest daily newspaper, earlier this year. Smith’s company, Sinclair, is one of the largest owners of television stations in the U.S.

“There are four places where you can have a voice in today’s marketplace: internet, radio, TV, and newspaper,” Smith said. “So the simple question is, if I was standing in front of every billionaire in the United States right now, I would say, ‘Do you want to have a voice to put out your philosophical perspective?'”

“If the answer is yes,” Smith continued, “then, OK, here’s how to do that. They have to decide: Do they really want to just sit on their money and put it in a nonprofit someplace? And then they lament the fact that Democrats control everything.”

The question of where wealthy Republicans should park their fortunes in the years ahead is presently being debated on the Right.

In a recent letter to groups he helps support, the influential conservative activist Leonard A. Leo threatened to withhold funding from organizations Leo warned are not “weaponizing” conservative ideas.

Leo, the co-chairman of the Federalist Society and the chairman of the CRC Advisors public relations firm in Washington, D.C., focused his letter in-part on the idea of media being a “catalyst” for change. A spokesperson for CRC Advisors declined to comment.

“And, beyond politics and law, left-wing philanthropy built or took over enormous infrastructure to control various cultural chokepoints — especially media, entertainment, higher education, and corporate America,” Leo wrote in the letter. “The Left correctly saw these institutions as catalysts for the radical social and political change they wanted to achieve, and their philanthropic investments were very smart and impactful.”

Conservatives often say politics is downstream from culture, a phrase famously attributed to the late journalist Andrew Breitbart, pointed out Scott Walter, the president of an investigative think tank on the Right called the Capital Research Center. The think tank was founded in 1984 and, according to its website, aims to “examine how foundations, charities, and other nonprofits spend money and get involved in politics and advocacy.”

But, Walter said, a towering dilemma is that conservative donors largely do not invest in “culture-shaping” institutions — media chief among them.

“What is the art of the conservative billionaire?” Walter asked. “Soros, by contrast, makes big investments like this huge radio play. If conservative donors don’t invest more, the damage to our country’s culture will only worsen.”