Jew with few ongoing ties to Hungary—is positioned as the nation’s foremost bogeyman. Finkelstein and Birnbaum’s demonization of Soros not only bolsters Orban’s political standing in Hungary but “please[s] his Russian neighbors,” as “Putin was afraid of the so-called ‘color revolutions’ [popular uprisings] like the one in Ukraine, and the Arab Spring, and had begun attacking Soros and his support for liberal causes” as a domestic distraction.117 By 2016, Finkelstein and Birnbaum have made Orban’s 2018 reelection campaign almost entirely about certain Hungarians’ implicitly anti-Semitic fear of the octogenarian Soros; as The Intercept will note, Orban was thus convinced by two Jewish men, Finkelstein and Birnbaum, to “focus[] his entire re-election campaign on the imaginary threat [to Hungary] posed by Soros.”118 Per BuzzFeed News, “Orban’s campaign against Soros never actually used the word Jew, but it was often implicit. Orban told his people they would have to fight against an ‘enemy’ who was ‘different,’ who didn’t have a ‘home.’ It was common to see anti-Semitic graffiti on ‘Stop Soros’ ads—voters knew what they were being told.”119 Incredibly, “even [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s son Yair posted an anti-Semitic meme in 2017 showing Soros and reptilians controlling the world.”120
During the same forty-eight-hour period in March 2016 in which Donald Trump meets with his national security advisory committee for the first time, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates pitch Trump on bringing aboard Fabrizio—an employee of Finkelstein and Birnbaum—and Gates meets with Birnbaum in Washington.121 The two men discuss whether Birnbaum, with his “close ties to current and former Israeli government officials,” can link up the Trump campaign with Psy-Group.122 Gates “request[s] proposals [from Psy-Group’s Joel Zamel] to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat … Clinton, according to interviews and copies of the proposals.”123 According to the New York Times, “the documents show that a senior Trump aide [Trump’s deputy campaign manager] saw the promise of a [digital] disruption effort to swing voters in Mr. Trump’s favor.”124 Because it is Birnbaum, the “senior aide” to Netanyahu who had previously co-managed one of the Israeli prime minister’s campaigns—and who the Times of Israel notes has “closely worked with a wide range of Israeli politicians over the years”—who makes the Gates-Zamel introduction, Gates and Birnbaum’s late March 2016 meeting bears many of the hallmarks of an attempt by a foreign power to tamper in the 2016 election through a trusted intermediary.125 Indeed, the chief identification the Times of Israel gives to Finkelstein and Birnbaum is as “longtime” Netanyahu advisers.126
The possibility that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to tamper with America’s 2016 presidential election is a grave one, requiring some consideration not only of whether it was within his power but in the character of the man to do so. Apropos of this inquiry, in 2018 Israeli police will recommend not just once or twice but three times that Netanyahu face criminal charges for “taking bribes, fraud, and breach of trust,” allegations that ultimately do lead to Netanyahu becoming the first sitting Israeli prime minister to face criminal charges (see chapter 10).127 The first allegation against Netanyahu involves him secretly colluding with a foreign billionaire (Australian entrepreneur James Packer) to advance his own interests; the second allegation submits that Netanyahu attempted to secretly collude with top Trump donor Sheldon Adelson in an effort to manipulate media coverage; and the third allegation, like the second, involves an attempt at clandestine collusion with a telecommunications and media conglomerate.128 Consequently, while Netanyahu has not to date been linked with his former top aide’s attempt to—possibly illegally—connect an Israeli company specializing in telecommunications and media strategy with the Trump campaign, neither can it be said that such an act of collusion would lie outside Netanyahu’s reputed sphere of activity.
As for whether interference by Zamel and Psy-Group in the 2016 election offers some additional evidence of involvement by the Israeli government, worth noting is a New York Times report confirming that Psy-Group is indeed “staffed by former Israeli intelligence operatives.”129 The Daily Beast and the Times of Israel have both reported that not just Gates but two members of “Trump’s inner circle” reached out to Psy-Group looking for election assistance; the names of these top-level Trump aides are at present unknown.130 What is known is that Zamel was so determined to get to Trump he “even asked Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, to offer Zamel’s services to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.”131 Gingrich was at the time a member of