Will Mnuchin’s ties influence Trump’s policies vis-à-vis Israel?
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, has past ties to billionaire George Soros, who has poured millions into funding anti-Israel organizations.
Mnuchin, who is Jewish, is a former partner at Goldman Sachs and a film producer. He served as finance chair of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mnuchin left Goldman Sachs in 2002, when Soros hired him to run a credit fund. In 2004, Mnuchin and two former Goldman colleagues founded the hedge fund Dune Capital Management LP, with financial backing from Soros. In 2009, Mnuchin and a group of billionaire investors, including Soros, bought the failed California-based mortgage lender IndyMac.
Soros, who was born in Hungary to Jewish parents, is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist and political activist who is a well-known supporter of so-called progressive causes. Soros has substantially funded many anti-Israel organizations through his philanthropy network, the Open Society Foundation, with the goal of smearing the Israeli government and undercutting its relationship with the US.
A recently leaked document shows that from 2001-2015, Soros funneled more than $9.5 million into a range of anti-Israel groups including Adalah, the Al-Tufula Center, the Arab Association for Human Rights, Baladna, The Galilee Society, Molad, the New Israel Fund and others.
By: JNS.org