George Soros reportedly cedes control of empire to a younger son

NEW YORK — Billionaire investor turned philanthropist George Soros is ceding control of his $25 billion empire to a younger son, Alexander Soros, according to an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal published online Sunday.

Soros’ business holdings include his nonprofit Open Society Foundations, which is active in more than 120 countries around the world and funnels about $1.5 billion annually to groups such as those that back human rights and promote the growth of democracies around the world, according to its website.

The 37-year-old, who goes by Alex, told the Wall Street Journal that he is “more political” than his 92-year-old father, who has been a right-wing target for his backing of liberal causes such as reducing racial bias in the justice system. But he noted that the two “think alike.”

Alex said he was broadening his father’s “liberal aims” and embracing different causes including voting and abortion rights, as well as gender equity. He said he aims to keep using the family’s wealth to back left-leaning U.S. politicians.

Alex told the Wall Street Journal that he recently met with Biden administration officials, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and heads of state, including Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to push for issues related to the family foundation.

In December, the board of Open Society Foundations, known as OSF, elected Alex as its chairman, succeeding his father. The newspaper also reported that Alex now directs political activity as president of Soros’ super PAC.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the younger Soros is the only family member on the investment committee overseeing Soros Fund Management, which manages money for the foundation and the family.

During the interview with the newspaper, Alex expressed concern that former President Donald Trump would return to the White House and hinted that the Soros organization would play a key financial role in the 2024 presidential race.

“As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it, too,” he said in the interview that took place at the fund manager’s New York offices.

Alex is the oldest of two sons from George Soros’ marriage with his second wife, Susan Weber, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The appointment passes over George Soros’ elder son Jonathan Soros, 52, a lawyer with a background in finance. He had been believed to be the clear successor until “a falling out and a change of heart,” according to the paper.

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Trump to host first major fundraiser the day of his arraignment

Former President Donald Trump is set to host the first fundraiser for his 2024 campaign on Tuesday evening, hours after he is expected to be arraigned in a Miami courtroom.

The fundraiser will take place at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club, for what advisers say will be the first in a string of gatherings for donors and bundlers that will take place across the country.

The campaign said it expects to raise $2 million at the event, helping to pad the former president’s coffers just weeks before the end of the second-quarter deadline and as Trump gears up for what could be a long and expensive nomination fight.

Earlier in the day, Trump is due to be in Miami, summoned over charges stemming from his handling and retention of classified documents he took from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida. The ex-president has been defiant since his indictment last week, pledging to stay in the race even if convicted.

Trump is expected to join the fundraiser just after making public remarks in which he will address the indictment, according to a person familiar with the plans. Preparations for the fundraiser were in the works long before it was known that he would be making a court appearance that same day.

Polls show Trump with large leads over his Republican primary rivals. Yet Trump is facing a well-funded opponent in Ron DeSantis, who has attracted the support of some of the party’s biggest donors. The Florida governor has raised more than $8 million following his late May campaign launch. A day after announcing his candidacy, DeSantis convened his top bundlers in Miami.

Trump has long relied on small dollar donors to propel him politically. The average contribution, those involved in his 2024 campaign say, is around $30. The former president drew a wave of online contributions in late March, after he was indicted in a separate case involving alleged hush money payments he made to a pornography actress, and his team has been sending out fundraising appeals to supporters trying to capitalize on conservative outrage over the charges in the classified documents case.

But aides say that, in contrast to his previous campaigns, the former president is also regularly working the phones to woo bundlers and other major contributors. Trump aides say they expect more than 300 bundlers to be on board the campaign by the end of June.

According to a copy of Tuesday’s invitation, supporters who bundle at least $100,000 will attend a private candlelight dinner. Those who give less will be rewarded in other ways, including with photo opportunities with Trump and with a “VIP reception with elected officials & special guests.”

The fundraiser will go towards a joint fundraising committee that will split its proceeds between the Trump campaign, which receives 90 percent of everything raised, and Trump’s Save America political action committee, which receives the remaining 10 percent. Trump has been using the PAC to pay for non-campaign-specific activities, such as paying his legal bills.

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North Carolina GOP censures Sen. Tillis

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Republican delegates in North Carolina voted Saturday at their annual convention to censure Thom Tillis, the state’s senior U.S. senator, for backing LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and gun violence policies.

As Sen. Tillis has gained influence in Congress for his willingness to work across the aisle, his record of supporting some key policies has raised concerns among some state Republicans that the senator has strayed from conservative values.

Several delegates in Greensboro criticized Tillis, who has held his seat in the Senate since 2015, for his work last year on the Respect For Marriage Act, which enshrined protections for same-sex and interracial marriages in federal law.

Both the state and national GOP platforms oppose same-sex marriage. But Tillis, who had opposed it earlier in his political career, was among the early supporters of the law who lobbied his GOP colleagues in Congress to vote in favor of it.

Others criticized him for challenging former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and for supporting a measure that provided funds for red flag laws, which allow state courts to authorize the temporary removal of firearms from people who they believe might pose a danger to themselves or others.

The North Carolina senator initially opposed Trump’s plan to use military construction dollars to build a wall along the nation’s southern border, but he eventually shifted his position.

Tillis spokesperson Daniel Keylin defended the senator’s voting record, writing in an email to The Associated Press that he “keeps his promises and delivers results.”

“He will never apologize for his work passing the largest tax cut in history, introducing legislation to secure the border and end sanctuary cities, delivering desperately-needed funding to strengthen school safety and protecting the rights of churches to worship freely based on their belief in traditional marriage,” Keylin said.

While the vote Saturday, which took place behind closed doors, cannot remove Tillis from office, supporters said they hope it sends a firm message of dissatisfaction. A two-thirds majority of the state party’s 1,801 voting delegates was needed for the resolution to pass, party spokesperson Jeff Moore said.

“We need people who are unwavering in their support for conservative ideals,” said Jim Forster, an 81-year-old delegate from Guilford. “His recent actions don’t reflect the party’s shift to the right — in fact, they’re moving in the exact wrong direction.”

Several state legislators, including Sen. Bobby Hanig of Currituck County, criticized the decision, saying it’s a bad idea to create more divisions within the party ahead of an election year when party unity will be paramount.

“I believe that a mob mentality doesn’t do us any good,” Hanig said. “Senator Tillis does a lot for North Carolina, he does a lot for the coastal communities, so why would I want to make him mad?”

State Sen. Jim Burgin of Harnett County said the vote to censure Tillis sets a dangerous precedent and does not allow enough flexibility for individual interpretation of party values.

Burgin questioned whether his own vote last month for North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban would similarly put him at risk of being censured because it’s out of line with the Republican platform, which states that life begins at conception.

“I don’t think we need to be attacking our own,” he said. “You don’t shoot your own elephants.”

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Zelenskyy says 'counteroffensive and defensive actions' under way against Russia

Ukrainian president appears to confirm long-awaited counteroffensive but declines to give details.

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What’s next in the Trump documents case

So, you’ve been indicted for hoarding international military secrets in cardboard boxes at your personal residence and obstructing the subsequent grand jury investigation. Now what?

The sprawling case against Donald Trump will now wrench the national gaze toward South Florida, where Trump will appear before a judge on Tuesday to enter a formal “not guilty” plea to the 37 felony charges he faces. That initial appearance, known as an arraignment, will likely take place before U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee who has ruled favorably for him in the past — or a federal magistrate judge named Edwin Torres.

After the arraignment, prosecutors and Trump’s legal team will undertake a familiar, and almost routine, set of procedural steps to advance the case.

First, they’ll discuss a timeline for further action in the case. That includes beginning discussions about a “protective order” to govern the sharing of evidence among the parties. That process, known as discovery, is particularly fraught in a case involving an extraordinary amount of highly classified intelligence — the protection of which is the basis for the investigation in the first place.

The “discovery” process, however, is what will likely be the most time-consuming phase of the trial. Trump is facing 31 charges for “willfully retaining” classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate, with each charge linked to a specific document that has only been described in broad strokes in the indictment. Trump’s pursuit of details about those records and how much of them are allowed to be provided to the parties in the case — and ultimately to the jury and public — will be a crucial trial issue that could take months to resolve.

The parties will also likely discuss setting initial deadlines for motions or updates in the case — including a potential timeline to bring the matter to trial. Special counsel Jack Smith indicated on Thursday that he intends to seek a “speedy trial” in accordance with that constitutional guarantee — but what that means in the real world is unclear.

Trump is already slated to go on trial next March on charges emanating from a New York state investigation about his alleged payment of hush money to a porn star. It would be an unusually ambitious timeframe if Smith seeks to bring his case to fruition ahead of the Manhattan trial.

There’s no expectation that prosecutors will seek onerous restrictions on Trump while he awaits the federal trial, though there will likely be a discussion of his pretrial release conditions — which could include restrictions on his ability to travel outside of his home district or other forms of monitoring and check-ins with the government. In a case carrying significant potential prison time, those restrictions are meant to ensure compliance with court appearances to reduce the likelihood of violations.

For Trump, squeezing court dates into an already jammed schedule — which includes travel for his 2024 presidential campaign as well as a startling array of other legal obligations — is a monumental task that requires Secret Service coordination and security preparation anywhere he goes.

And if that all sounds simple enough, there’s more in the offing. Trump still faces two other ongoing criminal probes related to his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. It’s possible that, by the end of this year, his indictment count will double from two to four.

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Trump vows to stay in the race even if convicted

Donald Trump vowed Saturday to continue running for president even if he were to be convicted as part of the 37-count federal felony indictment that was issued against him this week.

“I’ll never leave,” Trump said in an interview aboard his plane. “Look, if I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory that was not doable.”

Trump is not legally prohibited from running for president from prison or as a convicted felon. But such a bid would nevertheless provide a massive stress test for the country’s political and legal systems.

The former president leveled harsh criticisms at special counsel Jack Smith and argued that the case against him was politically motivated and flimsy. “These are thugs and degenerates who are after me,” he said.

Trump predicted he would not be convicted and said he did not anticipate taking a plea deal, though he left open the possibility of doing so “where they pay me some damages.”

He sidestepped the possibility that he would pardon himself should he win the presidency in 2024. “I don’t think I'll ever have to,” Trump said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

While Trump said campaign fundraising had skyrocketed since the indictment was issued, he conceded it was an unwelcome development.

“Nobody wants to be indicted,” said Trump. “I don’t care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don’t want to be indicted. I’ve never been indicted. I went through my whole life, now I get indicted every two months. It’s been political.”

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Trump goes off on Jack Smith and the indictment brought against him

COLUMBUS, GA — Donald Trump may be facing decades in prison for hoarding military secrets at his home, but he appeared Saturday to be a man unburdened by the legal fight that led to a 37-count federal felony indictment earlier this week.

In his first public remarks since a magistrate judge unsealed the damning case against him, Trump made clear that his best — and perhaps primary — defense against the charges will be waged in arenas before friendly audiences rather than in the courtroom.

The former president sought to galvanize his supporters to view the entire American justice system as corrupt, weaponized to target conservatives and deployed to prevent him from winning the 2024 election. The indictment, he said, was a “joke,” done only because Democrats feared him.

“These people don’t stop and they’re bad and we have to get rid of them,” Trump said to an audience assembled by the Georgia Republican Party. “These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated.”

But while that strategy has helped Trump turn the scandals he’s faced over the years into political strengths, the new and extremely detailed case will test the bounds of that strategy in ways Trump has never faced before.

Smith’s indictment suggests Trump personally directed aides to stash highly classified documents in cardboard storage boxes that he ordered shipped to Mar-a-Lago as his presidency expired. When the National Archives and Justice Department attempted to retrieve them, the Justice Department says, Trump ordered a valet to relocate dozens of boxes so they wouldn’t be found.

The indictment includes 31 charges for “willful retention” of classified documents, many of them described as military secrets of foreign governments, including allies. Six of the charges against Trump and his body man, Walt Nauta, were also for obstructing the grand jury investigation.

Trump made no secret of his plan to portray the prosecution against him — brought by special counsel Jack Smith — as secretly engineered by President Joe Biden, though the White House and the Department of Justice have gone to great lengths to keep a wall between them on the matter.

“This is a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out,” he proclaimed.

Trump used his remarks to demean both Smith — whom he called “deranged” — and the case Smith put together against him, which relied on extraordinary evidence culled from employees at Mar-a-Lago, close advisers to Trump and even one of his attorneys — Evan Corcoran — who was ordered by a judge to testify to the grand jury investigating the matter.

Smith on Friday delivered his first public statement since taking over the investigation in November, saying “laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced.

“Violations of those laws put our country at risk,” he said.

Trump previewed some of his legal defenses as well, citing Bill Clinton’s decision to keep tapes from a journalists’ interview in his home rather than turn them over to the National Archives. Trump claimed that the Presidential Records Act permitted him to remove any records created during his administration, even if they were classified, and convert them to his personal property and remove them at will.

Trump’s combative posture was evident even in his travel companion en route to the Georgia speech.

Trump traveled to the gathering from his club in Bedminster, New Jersey early Saturday with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has been one of his fiercest defenders.

En route to the event, supporters lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the motorcade and some held “Witch Hunt” signs to greet him when he deplaned. In the room, he was treated like a conquering hero. The crowd was filled with red hats and Trump supporters, people holding their phones aloft to catch a picture. The audience erupted when he was introduced.

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