As Orbán-allied think tank is dismantled, leaders shop its network to MAGA

The international fellows at the Orbán-backed Danube Institute are being let go by a government commissioner appointed to oversee spending. In response, leaders of the think tank have quietly set up a US entity to salvage their network. They are apparently being represented by the firm of Musk’s lawyer.

Suddenly, Budapest has fallen out of favour with the international brigades of Transatlantic conservatism. “Hungary is over” – declared influential American author Rod Dreher in a piece he wrote for The Free Press, lamenting that the country has descended into “just another small, secular-liberal European state within a globalist system.”

Atlatszo understands that Dreher’s six-figure (USD) contract has not been renewed with the Danube Institute (DI), a think tank funded by former PM Viktor Orbán’s administration where Dreher’s primary function was to serve as a Budapest-based lodestone to “Christian-conservative” public intellectuals across the Western world.

But international fellows at the DI are now being let go by a government commissioner appointed to oversee spending. In response, leaders of the think tank have quietly set up a US entity to salvage their network, Atlatszo can reveal. They are apparently being represented by the firm of Elon Musk’s lawyer.

In the course of reporting this story, Atlatszo spoke to more than half dozen sources acquainted with the workings of the DI, without exception on background. Government commissioner Ildikó Veres had not responded to phone calls by Atlatszo. A call and an email to DI executive director István Kiss also went unanswered.

A shining mansion on a hill

Over the years the DI – essentially an arm of the state-funded Batthyány Lajos Foundation (BLA) – assembled dozens of international researchers and writers in a luxurious mansion at the top of glitzy Castle Hill. Permanent DI fellows were outfitted with lavish salaries in exchange for researching and writing on their favoured causes.

Alongside fellow travellers in similarly minded state-funded outfits, permanent DI researchers provided the ideological backdrop to Orbán’s attempt to dress Budapest up as an English-speaking, global capital of anti-globalism for an even larger contingent of temporary, often salaried, collaborators.

International DI researchers even launched a gossip newsletter, edited by British music journalist-turned-researcher Gavin Haynes. Titled Based in Budapest, it chronicled the micro-community’s daily comings and goings: a Spectator writer setting up shop in the capital for a three-month fellowship; an Irish journalist working for The Hungarian Conservative on the hunt for a chair; the DI’s director of research looking to purchase a bicycle.

However, the music has abruptly stopped following Orbán’s defeat in the 12 April elections. In July, the incoming government of Prime Minister Péter Magyar appointed Ildikó Veres – a founder and CEO of a corporate tax advisory firm – as a special commissioner to the BLA tasked with putting an end to the squandering of Hungarian public funds. As a direct result, several international fellows at the DI are being let go, Atlatszo understands.

Those with one foot out of the door were quick to decry the incoming administration’s actions as uncivil. “The unsettling atmosphere of vengeance has overtaken Hungary” – Dreher wrote. Based in Budapest – the newsletter authored by DI fellows – complained bitterly in a now-deleted post about developments, disparagingly referring to commissioner Veres as a “local bookkeeper”.

Salvaging the network

Yet some within the DI’s leadership circle remain convinced that its network –comprising extensive institutional partnerships, a deep Rolodex of past and present fellows, and a broad list of Transatlantic conservative contacts cultivated over a decade – retains significant political capital.

The top floor of the BLA/DI villa at the summit of Várhegy, behind the trees and the hillside, in July 2021. Photo by the author.

The DI leadership is engaged in a two-pronged effort to salvage its professional network, Atlatszo understands. The first prong aimed to persuade Péter Magyar’s incoming government that the DI could be of use to them as well. The second involves privatising the DI and its relationships while courting fresh funding from ideological allies in the United States.

Orbán’s party, Fidesz – which previously served as a key donor to the BLA via its closely affiliated Foundation for a Civic Hungary (SZPMA) before the state took over its funding entirely – is not expected to figure directly and prominently in the DI’s future.

Which is a serious dilemma for the institute’s leadership, whose backgrounds are inextricably tied to the former governing party. DI President John O’Sullivan, a former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher and a popular figure in conservative circles on both sides of the Atlantic, has known Orbán personally since the early 1990s. His deputy, Hungarian-British dual national István Kiss is an alumnus of Századvég, a political consultancy closely linked to Fidesz.

Turning towards the center

Lacking direct lines of communication to Magyar’s Tisza party, the strategy concocted within the DI was to signal a willingness to find common ground by making a marked pivot toward the centre-right.

A “reverse blacklist” was drawn up featuring moderate, Hungarian conservative intellectuals previously shunned by Orbán – including the conservative former central bank governor Péter Ákos Bod and the markedly Atlanticist former Fidesz foreign minister János Martonyi. The intention was for the DI to host panel discussions featuring figures primarily drawn from this “survival list”.

The scheme, however, hinged on the DI maintaining the autonomy to set and fund its own agenda using an apparently sizable rainy-day fund accumulated over previous years. The arrival of the government commissioner, however, stopped that strategy in its tracks. Instead of planning fresh events, BLA and DI staff now spend their days compiling dossiers for commissioner Veres – forcing the think tank’s leadership to seek a welcoming host abroad.

A Transatlantic rescue boat

Atlatszo understands that members of the DI leadership set their sights on the United States, leveraging established relationships within US President Donald Trump’s MAGA faction. In the US, the DI had already partnered with the Heritage Foundation, famous for authoring the Project 2025 governance blueprint for the current administration – and notably a former employer of O’Sullivan.

Furthermore, the DI is institutionally affiliated with the Center for Fundamental Rights, a Hungarian far-right entity that has regularly co-hosted CPAC Hungary alongside the American Conservative Union.

A not-for-profit corporation registered in Virginia roughly a year prior to the 2026 Hungarian elections under the name of Danube Institute USA by DI president O’Sullivan now appears to be the rescue boat for some in the leadership.

According to information sourced from a person with inside understanding of the DI’s activities, immediately after the April elections a leadership delegation – including executive director István Kiss and director for international relations Kristóf Veres (no relation to the commissioner) – travelled to Washington DC for closed-door discussions with American counterparts.

By 30 April, DI USA’s board had been expanded to include Kiss alongside a slate of prominent American figures in addition to O’Sullivan (as already reported by the left-wing advocacy organisation Global Project Against Hate and Extremism).

The firm of Musk’s lawyer

Corporate documentation regarding the non-profit status of the organisation reviewed by Atlatszo indicates that DI USA is being represented by Lex Politica, a Republican-aligned political law firm whose founding partner, Chris Gober, is prominent for representing billionaire Elon Musk and his political action committee. Gober is currently running for Congress in Texas.

On Virginia corporate filings, the address listed for all directors is Lex Politica’s Texas mailing address. Tax filings further indicate the paperwork was handled on behalf of DI USA by Steve Roberts, a partner at the firm.

In an October 2025 op-ed in the Washington Examiner, Roberts floated the idea of deploying the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) against the so-called “Soros network.”

The commentary is notable as both George Soros’s philanthropic foundation and FARA were long-standing fixtures of Fidesz messaging. The Orbán government previously launched high-profile public campaigns against Soros, while Hungary’s much-criticised Sovereignty Protection Office – an investigative body set up to target independent media and civil society organisations – was inaccurately framed by its leader as being modelled on FARA.

A host of right-wing characters

New board members at DI USA include Christopher DeMuth, a former Heritage fellow who recently resigned from the organisation amid controversy surrounding its involvement in an antisemitism scandal.

Another newly appointed director is John Fonte, a former DI fellow and current director at the Hudson Institute (HI). IRS filings show that the Hudson Institute received $373,000 in funding between 2020 and 2023 from the Hungary Initiatives Foundation (HIF), an entity established and endowed by the Hungarian government.

Other recent HIF grants include $239,000 awarded to the Center for Immigration Studies in 2022–2023, and $90,000 to the Institute of World Politics. The former employed Kristóf Veres as a fellow during a period overlapping with the grant timeframe, while the latter serves as another institutional partner of the DI.

A third US-based board member is Carter LeCraw, founder and CEO of Tennessee-registered Christian-values investment firm American Values, Inc. LeCraw was personally involved in diplomatic engagements between the Tennessee State Senate and Orbán’s government, according to a profile in Hungarian Conservative – a publication whose publisher is wholly owned by the BLA.

A fourth US director is Patrick Deneen, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. In 2024, Deneen appeared alongside Rod Dreher at a DI event  in Budapest promoting a book by a senior Hungarian government official. Both Deneen and Dreher belong to the intellectual right-wing cohort believed to influence US Vice President JD Vance.

Serving as treasurer of DI USA is Cabell Hobbs, a Virginia-based political consultant who has previously acted as treasurer for dozens of Republican-linked political action committees (PACs).

A name for a network

Atlatszo understands that DI leadership from Hungary held fruitful conversations with US counterparts regarding potential funding for the successor entity – possibly via a US State Department program intended to support Trump-aligned European organisations.

O’Sullivan and Kiss are uniquely positioned in this arena, given the DI’s broad array of partnerships with sovereigntist groups across Europe, as well as several Central Asian entities.

It remains unclear, however, whether the current DI group can achieve a clean break from the new Hungarian administration. DI USA appears intent on continuing to trade under the “Danube Institute” name, even though the Hungarian state – which funded the original institute in full through the BLA since its inception – isn’t involved in the American non-profit.

Written by Márton Sarkadi Nagy, Zalán Zubor contributed reporting. Cover photo: Paul du Quenoy, president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute and DI fellow, Gladden Pappin, president of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, Rod Dreher, and Sean Nottoli, former regionald Director of the 2024 Donald Trump campaign and DI fellow at a DI event on 3 July 2025. Photograph by the author.