Abdul El-Sayed built his whole Michigan Senate campaign around bashing billionaires who buy politicians.
But a closed-door party at a California mansion told a very different story.
And a member of the Soros family let slip one secret about El-Sayed that nobody in the room was supposed to record.
What Jeffrey Soros told the room about 2012
Jeffrey Soros is the nephew of billionaire Democrat donor George Soros. He produces movies in Hollywood and runs the Los Angeles Media Fund as its CEO.
On September 28, 2026, he opened his California home to Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed for a private fundraiser. Organizers asked the guests not to record anything.
Somebody recorded it anyway. Fox News Digital obtained the footage.
The tape shows Soros standing next to El-Sayed and welcoming the crowd. “I just wanted to welcome you here and express my appreciation for coming. And it’s been a privilege,” Soros said.
Then came the part the campaign would probably like back.
“Speaking of privilege, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Abdul since 2012. I got to interview him as a finalist for my parents’ fellowship, the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans,” Soros told the donors.
El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, won that fellowship in 2012. Jeffrey Soros’ parents created the program in 1997, according to the fellowship’s own history, and in the 2012 cycle it advertised awards of up to $90,000 over two years for graduate study.
The program still lists El-Sayed among its fellows.
So the Soros family helped pay for the candidate’s graduate education, and 14 years later a Soros sat on the interview panel’s other side of the ledger, passing the hat for his Senate run. That’s a long relationship.
A $57,800 ask from the money out of politics candidate
A flyer for the event told guests they could give up to $57,800 to the Abdul for Michigan Victory Fund.
Jeffrey Soros and his wife, Catharine, hosted the evening alongside Pod Save America hosts Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, and Ben Rhodes. Hollywood money and podcast celebrities, all gathered a couple thousand miles from the nearest Michigan voter.
And this is the candidate who made getting money out of politics the theme of his run.
In a 2025 interview, the former Wayne County health director complained about the “fundamental corruption” of a system that lets “corporations and would-be oligarchs and billionaires” buy influence. In an April campaign statement reported by The National News Desk, El-Sayed said, “The last year has been about bringing together folks around our shared goals to get money out of politics, put money back in Michiganders’ pockets, and pass Medicare for All.”
But nobody at the Soros house seemed worried about corruption that night.
Republican nominee Mike Rogers’ campaign jumped on the footage. “Abdul El-Sayed raising dark Soros money in California after begging Chuck Schumer for money in DC is the least surprising thing he’s done all cycle,” communications director Alyssa Brouillet told Fox News.
The El-Sayed campaign did not address what Soros said about the fellowship. It changed the subject, claiming that “corporate special interests are spending millions of dollars in dark money to try to buy Rogers a Senate seat.”
No explanation of the 2012 interview. No word on the $57,800 ask either.
The Soros money trail runs deeper than one house party
The fundraiser is only the piece that somebody caught on camera.
Newsweek reviewed campaign finance records through June 30 and reported that Democracy PAC, the Soros family’s super PAC, gave $9 million this cycle to Senate Majority PAC. That group, according to Newsweek, is spending $30 million to elect El-Sayed.
And El-Sayed’s own campaign committees raised about $14.5 million from January 2025 through July 15, according to the Federal Election Commission filings Newsweek cited.
That’s a lot of money for a man who says money is the problem.
Here’s where the media’s favorite label for candidates like El-Sayed falls apart. The press calls this “populism.” But what the media calls left-wing populism keeps turning out to be the same thing every time: more state control over industry, government-run healthcare under the Medicare for All banner, and a donor list packed with the wealthiest people in California.
A real populist doesn’t need a movie producer’s living room. And a real populist doesn’t ask the audience to put their phones away.
To be fair, the fellowship itself is a scholarship program, and Jeffrey Soros’ parents started it, not George Soros. Winning a graduate award in 2012 is not a scandal. But the issue was never the scholarship. The issue is a candidate who tells Michigan voters that billionaires corrupt everything they touch while a billionaire family that helped fund his schooling now helps fund his campaign.
Voters can hear that contradiction without anyone spelling it out for them.
Democrats have run this play for years. They rail against big money on the stump, then fly to the coasts to collect it. The speeches happen in Michigan union halls. The checks get written in California.
And the timing matters. A poll released in September 2026 showed Rogers at 44.4 percent and El-Sayed at 43.1 percent, about as close as a Senate race gets. Races that tight draw national donors like moths to a porch light, and the Soros network clearly decided this seat deserves its attention.
Which raises a fair question for the weeks ahead. If the footage from one closed-door event revealed a 14-year relationship that the campaign never advertised, what did the guests hear at the fundraisers nobody filmed?
El-Sayed’s campaign had a chance to answer for the Soros remarks and passed. Expect the “money out of politics” slogan to keep running in the ads anyway.
Sources: Breitbart News, “Soros Nephew Says Family Fellowship Paid for El-Sayed’s Education,” September 29, 2026
Fox News Digital, “Soros nephew divulges how family’s power helped bankroll El-Sayed’s education during secretive fundraiser”
Newsweek, “Anti-Billionaire Abdul El-Sayed Backed by Soros: List of Wealthy Supporters”
The National News Desk, “Mike Rogers calls El-Sayed a ‘con man’ over Soros fundraiser and Hasan Piker ties”
The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, “About the Fellowship”