A high-level director at George Soros' Open Society Foundations (OSF) who is tied to a group bankrolled by the billionaire and quietly working with President Biden's administration on policy has close access to the White House, records show.
Tom Perriello, Open Society-U.S.'s executive director and part of Soros' leadership team, and who sits on the board of Governing for Impact, an outside Soros-funded group maneuvering behind the scenes to shape and implement policy, has frequently visited the White House for meetings and events.
Perriello's name appears in White House visitor logs 13 times on eight different days between May 2021 and September 2022, the last publicly available month for the records, a Fox News Digital review has found. On three of the days he visited, multiple appointments appear in the forms.
"Open Society is dedicated to advancing inclusive democracy and prosperity, and human rights, in the United States and around the world," an OSF spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "Our leadership, like our grantees, actively advocate with policymakers to advance these goals, and that includes engaging with policymakers from both parties. Tom also has taken meetings on behalf of Open Society and in his personal capacity as a former Member of Congress."
SECRETIVE SOROS-FUNDED GROUP WORKS BEHIND THE SCENES WITH BIDEN ADMIN ON POLICY, DOCUMENTS SHOW
OSF did not answer questions on the nature of the meetings, and the White House did not respond to an inquiry on the matter. It remains unclear precisely who Perriello met with for the sessions, as the visitor logs often contain White House staff who book appointments, meet the guests and take them to other personnel.
However, the records show that Jordan Finkelstein, the chief of staff to Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn, was one individual to greet Perriello. Richard Figueroa, a race and ethnicity policy adviser; Rachel Chiu, chief of staff in the office of political strategy and outreach; Yohannes Abraham, previously the deputy assistant to the president, chief of staff, and executive secretary of the National Security Council, also appear in the logs, among others.
Perriello's proximity to the Biden administration further illustrates Soros' inner circle's close access to those who run the country. Soros' son Alex, who acts as OSF's chair, has scored several meetings at the White House, including twice visiting Ron Klain, Biden's outgoing chief of staff. Alex has also publicly posted several pictures with his father and Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, at what appear to be small, private gatherings.
Perriello, meanwhile, is also involved with a left-wing outfit working to shift policy behind closed doors. He sits on the board of Governing for Impact (GFI), a once secretive group backed by millions of dollars from Soros that has quietly worked with the Biden administration on the policy items, Fox News Digital previously reported.
GFI launched with a vision of preparing the Biden administration for a "transformative governance" and produced "more than 60 in-depth, shovel-ready regulatory recommendations" for dozens of federal agencies," a now-deleted job advertisement on Harvard Law School's website read.
The group has boasted in internal memos of implementing more than 20 of its regulatory agenda items as they work with the administration to reverse Trump-era deregulations by focusing on education, health care, housing, labor and environmental issues. GFI has also prepared legal policy memos for at least ten federal departments and agencies and ten administrative law primers as of 2021, according to an internal slideshow from the group.
Soros' cash has propelled GFI and its related action fund from the outset. The Foundation to Promote Open Society, a nonprofit in Soros' network, has funneled nearly $10 million to GFI since 2019, records show. Additionally, the Open Society Policy Center, Soros' advocacy nonprofit, sent $7.45 million to GFI's action fund during that time. Open Society-U.S., which Perriello leads, was the referring program for the grants.
GFI's total contributions are unknown, but Soros' cash likely puts him among its top donors. The groups are not required to file tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service because they are fiscally sponsored projects of the New Venture Fund and Sixteen Thirty Fund, not standalone organizations.
"Perriello's frequent lunch meetings at the White House are just more proof that Governing for Impact, and by extension George Soros, is secretly calling the shots on regulations that will affect the daily lives of millions," said the Capital Research Center's Parker Thayer, who initially discovered the group and alerted Fox News Digital.
The access Soros' personnel and family have to the Biden administration is a sharp departure from President Obama's tenure.
In a 2018 New York Times Magazine interview, Soros lamented that Obama was his "greatest disappointment" on a professional level and said he had frozen him out after winning his election.
"He closed the door on me," Soros said during the interview. "He made one phone call thanking me for my support, which was meant to last for five minutes, and I engaged him, and he had to spend another three minutes with me, so I dragged it out to eight minutes."
