US gov't ran TV report on 'nonpracticing Jew' George Soros—and producers of report are in hot water

The federal government said it will discipline employees who ran a television report on George Soros that violated professional ethics and standards, The Associated Press reported.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media, the fed's international broadcasting agency, told the AP that the report's producers will be placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into “apparent misconduct” and may face discipline — including firing.

The "independent federal agency ... seeks to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy," the USAGM notes on its website.

What did the report say?

The Soros report aired in May on the Spanish-language Radio Television Marti network, which broadcasts to Cuba, the outlet said.

The Washington Post said the program called Soros a “nonpracticing Jew of flexible morals,” claimed he took part in “clandestine operations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union,” and described him as “the architect of the financial collapse of 2008.”

More about the broadcast from the AP:

It described him as a “Jewish multi-millionaire” influencing nations through non-government groups. It referenced the conservative organization Judicial Watch as believing he was undermining democracies.

Recently, Soros has been accused without evidence by right-wing commentators and politicians of funding migrants heading to the U.S. from Central America.

A number of prominent Democrats were mailed pipe bombs last week, and Soros was among them. The 88-year-old billionaire financier is a well-known donor to liberal causes.

What did Sen. Jeff Flake have to say?

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) told the Post he's pleased the agency is disciplining the employees behind the report.

“At best, TV and Radio Martí are pretty irrelevant,” Flake — who's said the broadcaster is a waste of federal funds — told the paper. However, he added to the Post that “when you have an agenda like this, basically to smear George Soros and provide a platform for anti-Semitic views, to be paid for by the U.S. taxpayer,” it becomes “pernicious."

Flake tweeted the following on Saturday:

"A TV Marti program that was introduced with the phrase, 'George Soros, a multimillionaire Jew,' was paid for by the American taxpayer, and broadcast to Latin America last summer, in our name," Flake wrote. "This is taxpayer-funded anti-Semitism."

Soros’s Open Society Institute sent a letter to USAGM and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting denouncing the broadcast as a “flagrant and crude propaganda television program,” taking issue with its content, and calling for an investigation, the paper said.