President Donald Trump suggested on Friday his administration will pursue federal charges against billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, part of a long history of threatening his political opponents with criminal proceedings.
“We’re going to look into Soros,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends,” “because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people.”
“Because this is more than like protests,” Trump added. “This is real agitation. This is riots on the street. And we’re going to look into it.”
Trump previously floated charging Soros and his son under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in August on Truth Social for allegedly organizing resistance to the administration’s immigration crackdowns and deployments of federal troops in U.S. cities.
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Trump has not presented evidence of the claim. Open Society Foundation, which was founded by Soros, wrote in August that the group does “not support or fund violent protests,” calling the threats of prosecution “outrageous.”
Trump’s latest comments come amid calls from Trump allies for a major crackdown on liberal groups, which they claim are culpable for the assassination of conservative leader Charlie Kirk earlier this week. Law enforcement had not revealed any information about a suspect, including any potential motive.
Trump said following Kirk’s killing that he would “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”
During the Friday interview, Trump was then asked about extremism and polarization in the U.S.
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. Worried about the border, they’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’”
Trump offered a different assessment of the “radicals on the left.”
“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy,” Trump said.
This article has been updated with an August comment from Open Society Foundation.
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