George Soros' Foundation Calls on Congress to Investigate Facebook

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The president of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations has demanded oversight of Facebook by U.S. lawmakers after the social media giant confirmed it hired a PR firm to run a smear campaign against the liberal billionaire financier.

Facebook’s former policy and communications chief, Elliot Schrage, took responsibility for commissioning the use of Definers Public Affairs. 

The consulting and opposition-research firm was hired by Facebook and tasked with scrutinizing detractors.

“I knew and approved of the decision to hire Definers and similar firms,” Schrage said in an internal post, responding to a New York Times article last week that exposed Facebook’s hiring of Definers.

Schrage also revealed that Facebook asked Definers to investigate Soros after the globalist Democrat donor called internet “monopolies” a “menace” during a speech at the World Economic Forum in January.

“We had not heard such criticism from him before and wanted to determine if he had any financial motivation,” Schrage wrote.

“Definers researched this using public information.”

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After Facebook finally took some responsibility on Wednesday night for hiring the public relations firm to smear its critics as agents of Soros, Open Society Foundations head Patrick Gaspard called for a Congressional investigation.

“So @facebook decides to drop a turkey on Thanksgiving eve, with admission that Definers was tasked by company leadership to target and smear George Soros because he publicly criticized their out of control business model. Sorry, but this needs independent, congressional oversight.”

So @facebook decides to drop a turkey on Thanksgiving eve, with admission that Definers was tasked by company leadership to target and smear George Soros because he publicly criticized their out of control business model. Sorry, but this needs independent, congressional oversight

— Patrick Gaspard (@patrickgaspard) November 21, 2018

According to RT, Gaspard was responding to an admission by Facebook’s outgoing Head of Communications and Policy Elliot Schrage, who owned up top hiring a PR firm – Washington, DC-based Definers – to attack Facebook’s critics and label them agents of Soros, a billionaire and prominent liberal donor.

In a blog post, Schrage admitted that he tasked Definers with pushing the Soros angle, namely that the billionaire was funding the activist group ‘Freedom from Facebook.’

After learning that Soros did in fact fund some of the group’s members, Schrage said Definers “prepared documents and distributed these to the press to show that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement.” Schrage maintained that Facebook did not ask Definers to create ‘fake news,’ despite a former employee telling NBC that Definers had its own “in-house fake news shop” to spread its message.

Facebook dumps news at 5 pm ET before Thanksgiving that it did ask Definers to go after Soros https://t.co/r1aOd85rtZ pic.twitter.com/2yK54mhrIt

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) November 21, 2018

The relationship was revealed in an explosive New York Times report last week that accused Facebook’s senior leadership of mismanaging a multitude of scandals, from ‘Russian interference’ in the 2016 election to the Cambridge Analytica privacy debacle earlier this year.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg both denied any knowledge of the company’s hiring of Definers, despite an official statement describing the relationship between Facebook and Definers as “well known in the media.”

Soros’ associates have been relentless in calling for change at Facebook, even since before the New York Times’ story broke.

In January, Soros himself called Facebook and other Silicon Valley tech “monopolies” a “menace” to society, whose “days are numbered.” 

Last week, Michael Vachon, an adviser to the chair at Soros Fund Management, called on Facebook to undertake an audit of all of its lobbying and PR relationships.

Nor were they buying Zuckerberg’s protestations of innocence.

“I find it hard to believe that one would go after someone like George Soros...without some clearance at the highest levels,” Gaspard told CNN on Tuesday night.

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Zuckerberg appears to be holding firm, though.

In his own interview with CNN on Tuesday, the 34-year-old CEO issued his trademark style of meandering, deflective denial when host Laurie Segall asked if he knew anything about the affair.

“Well...uhh...I learned about this when I read the report as well...I don’t think this point was about a specific PR firm, it was about how we act. That’s why I think it’s not just important what we’re doing with this one firm, but that we go through and look at all of the different PR firms and folks we work with,” Zuckerberg replied.

After spending much of the year apologizing for one privacy screw-up after another, Zuckerberg is once again back in the spotlight.

Despite falling stock prices, shareholder moves to oust him, and now Soros’ wealth and influence pushing against him, Zuckerberg was defiant.

Asked whether he’d ever step down as Facebook’s chairman – Zuckerberg is both chairman and CEO of the company – he replied: “that’s not the plan.”

"There are certainly going to be issues that we need to work through over time,” Zuckerberg continued. 

“But I think that while we are doing that, we can't lose sight of all of the really positive things that are happening here as well."