Soft-on-Crime District Attorneys Wreaking Havoc
Most Americans would agree that the core job of government is to protect the innocent and uphold public safety. Prosecutors are supposed to prosecute crime. In many of the nation’s major cities, however, district attorneys whose job is to bring criminals to justice no longer regard this as their responsibility.
For more than a decade, left-wing billionaire George Soros who uses his vast wealth to promote radical progressive causes, has quietly bankrolled the election of district attorneys across the country, handpicked by him for their promise to promote a “woke” version of justice while in office.
This twisted woke ideology preaches that the nation’s criminal justice system is irreparably racist. Since the system is controlled by privileged white elites, it’s beyond reform and needs to be totally dismantled.
Once in office, these bought and paid for district attorneys keep their end of the deal, firing traditional prosecutors and replacing them with subordinates who will agree not to prosecute misdemeanors; who will abolish cash bail and keep lawbreakers out of prison, or assign very lenient jail terms.
Members of the Soros coterie have come to be known as “rogue prosecutors” who have “decriminalized” a significant number of crimes including shoplifting, traffic violations and public vandalism.
Those who commit these crimes might be arrested by police but are invariably released by the DA’s office the following day without posting bail.
By winking at mass shop-lifting, drug use and vandalism, setting free lawbreakers and treating even hardened criminals with shocking leniency, these prosecutors have sparked crime waves and lawlessness in many cities, experts say.
In some jurisdictions, even breaking into someone’s home will be excused if the perpetrator tells authorities “he just wanted to get out of the cold,” a NY Post article said.
“Rogue prosecutors have turned once-safe communities into war zones,” former federal prosecutor and judge Charles Stimson explains in Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers are Destroying America’s Communities.
Stimson explains that the soft-on-crime prosecutor subscribes to the belief that most criminals are victims of poverty, discrimination and other societal ills who should not be punished for their crimes, but rather “rehabilitated” through community service and skills training.
“For progressives, prisons are equated with ‘the plantation’ and the evils of slavery, author Stimson noted in an interview. “So in the fight against that evil, you get rid of the prosecutor who sends criminals to jail, and you put in a pro-criminal zealot that won’t send more people “to the plantation.” The way to accomplish that is by not prosecuting crime. Literally.”
Message to Police: Don’t Make Arrests
The message this sends to the police is “Don’t arrest people,” the former federal judge said. “Because here’s the ingenious aspect of this movement; they realized that it’s not the cop, it’s not the sheriff, the mayor or the city council, and it’s certainly not the governor who’s the gatekeeper to the criminal justice system.”
“Who is it? It’s the DA. He and he alone can decide who is prosecuted and which crimes are not going to be prosecuted.”
Once they’re ushered into office with all that Soros money, Stimson explains, “prosecutors fulfill their end of the bargain. They water down most felonies to misdemeanors, and then refuse to prosecute the misdemeanors. They don’t send any juveniles, even vicious, violent ones, to adult court. They don’t allow the death penalty, even though it may be authorized in that state. They won’t ask for life without parole for even the most heinous of crimes.”
The damage done to society by soft-on-crimes prosecutors is immeasurable, the author of Rogue Prosecutors contends. In Democratic-led cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Philadelphia and New York, murder, drug marketing and violent assault have spiked.
Democratic officials in these cities have cited polls that point to a decline in criminal convictions and insist these numbers show proof of reduced crime. Americans have been slowly catching on to the fact that the reported ‘decline’ in criminal convictions in these cities points not to diminished crime rates but the reduced prosecution of crime.
Backlash
The backlash, though gradual, is impossible to miss: voters in multiple cities are ousting soft-on-crime prosecutors from office, as highlighted in The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Among the more than 75 district attorneys across the country whose campaigns were funded by Soros, about a dozen have been booted from office in recent years, according to a Feb. 24 NY Post op-ed.
Marilyn Mosby, one of the first Soros-backed prosecutors, won the race for the office of the U.S. Attorney of Baltimore in 2015. On her watch, the Post article said, murders skyrocketed nearly 50 percent. Chillingly, from the 2015-2019 period, 1 in every 350 Baltimore city residents was murdered, the article calculated.
Mosby’s legal troubles while she was in office, compounded by her poor track record of convictions, sealed her fate. She was found guilty in federal court this February of lying on a mortgage application for a Florida condominium purchase, adding to two perjury convictions three months ago.
She lost the Democratic primary for re-election in mid-2022 and left office in January 2023. Mosby now faces 10-40 years in prison at her upcoming sentencing in May.
Loudoun Scandal Fuels Parents Rights Movement
Buta Biberaj won the Loudoun County, Virginia district attorney race and was sworn into office in January 2020. “So ineffective was Biberaj at doing her job,” the op-ed notes, “that of 735 cases brought to her office, she dismissed over half, bringing only 8 percent to trial.”
In a bizarre saga, Biberaj used all the powers of her office to prosecute not a hardcore criminal, but a Loudoun father who spoke out at a school board meeting about his daughter being attacked at her high school by a male student posing as a girl.
The father, Scott Smith, railed against school officials that put woke ideology above the safety of their students. He castigated the school district for allowing radical policies in the school, where male students were allowed to impersonate female students, and were even given access to female locker rooms.
The attack on his daughter was “a tragedy that was entirely preventable,” he said.
The school meeting grew explosive and Smith was arrested, charged with disorderly conduct and labeled a “domestic terrorist,” in a scandal that made headlines across the country.
Two-Year Prosecution of a Parent Over ‘Domestic Terrorism’
Shockingly, Biberaj spent two years prosecuting Smith, while the girl’s attacker was merely transferred to another school, where he went on to assault someone else, the NY Post and other media reports detail.
The case became emblematic of the bitter clash in school districts across the nation; between advocates pushing woke doctrine on public school students and outraged parents who oppose this ideology and insist on having a say in their children’s education.
Both student assault cases and the Loudoun school board meeting galvanized the parent rights movement that swept Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin into office, and sparked heated national debate over the issues at play.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, eventually pardoned the girl’s father, affirming that he was innocent of all charges. The fallout generated by the scandal greatly eroded public support for Biberaj and she was defeated in November 2023 by Republican Bob Anderson.
Soros Prosecutor Goes After Couple Acting in Self-Defense
Another Soros protégé, Kim Gardner, became circuit attorney of St. Louis in 2016 after Soros sank over $165,0000 into her political race. The left-wing billionaire then spent $116,000 backing her re-election.
During Gardner’s tenure, nearly 12,000 criminal cases were dismissed, and, like Biberaj, she proved her progressive credentials by going after law-abiding citizens.
In a case that went viral, Gardner targeted a husband and wife, David and Patricia McCloskey, both attorneys in St. Louis Missouri, for standing up against a mob of Black Lives Matter agitators who had congregated in front of their home. Almost a dozen of the rabble rousers had advanced onto the property, reported Fox News.
The episode took place during the George Floyd riots of 2021, when St. Louis and other major cities became the scene of mass rioting, looting and destruction of property. Four policemen were shot and a retired police captain was killed.
Throughout this period, liberal news media sought to portray the riots as “peaceful protests,” while cell phone footage capturing waves of protestors looting stores and setting cars ablaze told a very different story.
It was against the backdrop of the ongoing rioting that the St. Louis couple stood outside their homes, brandishing weapons. They waved them at BLM protesters who broke through an iron gate, ignored a “No Trespassing” sign, and screamed threats of arson at them, the McCloskeys said in a Fox News appearance.
DA Gardner made herself notorious by painting the couple as racists who falsely suspected innocent people of harboring violent intentions. She had the couple arrested for illegal possession of firearms.
After the couple pled guilty to a misdemeanor charges, the Court suspended their law licenses in February 2022, only to later reinstate them, and instead place the couple on probation for one year.
“It’s like we were the worst criminals in St. Louis – despite the 262 murders the city experienced in 2020 – by standing on our front porch and defending ourselves,” Mr. McCloskey said. “The DA leapfrogged over 6,000 other cases including serious felonies, in order to prosecute us.”
Out of Chaos Comes Tyranny
“I definitely believe there’s an intent to create chaos. It’s not accidental. It’s not incompetence,” McCloskey said about Gardner’s soft-on-crime policies.
“Because out of chaos comes tyranny. You demoralize people, you give them an environment of chaos, lawlessness, poverty and uncertainty. And what do they do? They ask somebody else to fix their problems, they ask the government to come in and provide a solution. And that’s what all this is about. And it’s not just happening in St. Louis, but in every major city.”
Plagued by a separate scandal after she released a repeat criminal on bail, and the man then hit a young girl with his vehicle at a high speed, resulting in her having her legs amputated, Gardner faced intense pressure to resign. After the Missouri attorney general moved to have her forcibly removed, she stepped down.
In another ouster, voters overwhelmingly chose to recall San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin after the city—one of the most liberal in America—deteriorated into one of the most dangerous zones in the country.
Boudin is widely credited with legalizing shoplifting in San Francisco. Video surveillance that went viral on social media, of massive thefts at the city’s stores—which stopped reporting crime because Boudin wouldn’t prosecute it—outraged the public.
“In a truly amazing feat, Boudin managed to be too crazy even for San Francisco,” a New York Post op-ed writes. “He faced a successful recall in 2022. Such a disaster was Boudin that Soros denied funding him after the recall.”
Freed On $1000 Bail after Intentionally Running Someone Over
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm encountered public fury after it came to light that his office had freed Darrell Brooks on $1000 bail, after he had intentionally run over a woman with his vehicle, following an altercation.
This was a man who went on to kill six more people and injure 70 more when he deliberately drove through a Wisconsin parade two weeks later. The case triggered a backlash against Chrisholm’s new bail reform policy that lowered cash bail levels to a fraction of what they used to be.
The case further trashed Chisholm’s reputation as a weak-on-crime DA. An investigation from Wisconsin Right Now found that Chisholm’s office “has been refusing to prosecute 6 in every 10 felony cases requested by police, and an astounding 8 in 10 misdemeanor cases.”
As public anger mounted, Chisholm announced he wouldn’t be running for re-election at the end of this year.
Numerous scandal-plagued Soros DAs could be the next on the chopping block,” the NY Post predicted, singling out Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner as one of the most well-known Soros DAs, who has become infamous “for his weak-on-crime approach to serious crimes.”
Last September, the Pennsylvania House voted 162-38 to hold Krasner in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Committee on Restoring Law and Order, which was investigating Krasner’s approach to crime.
After the Pennsylvania House voted 107-85 to impeach Krasner, a ruling from the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania halted the process, and the Senate postponed its trial date. In lieu of impeachment, Pennsylvania then found a way to circumvent the soft-on-crime Krasner.
Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro, signed a law, Act 40, that allows the state to appoint a special prosecutor to handle crimes 500 yards or less from state transportation properties (vehicles and vessels such as aircraft, trains, water vessels and motor vehicles), including in Philadelphia. With the new law in place, Philadelphians can hope for a tightening of law enforcement and reduction of crime.
“Investing in soft-on-crime DAs may have been Soros’ successful investment over the past few years, but as we’ve seen, it’s an investment that can quickly turn around,” the author concludes. “All you need to do is vote.” [See Sidebar]
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How Democrats Are Rebranding Themselves as Anti-Crime
An article in the left-leaning Politico claims the left is now “in retreat on criminal justice reform,” with leading “blue” cities embracing conservative anti-crime measures.
“San Francisco, Washington and New York City are among the municipalities where policymakers are backing harsher policies. San Francisco’s liberal voters just endorsed mandated drug screenings for welfare recipients. And Washington’s progressive City Council passed a crime package Tuesday that will keep more people in jail while awaiting trial,” the article enthuses.
If that is not enough to convince people that a real shift is taking place on the subject of soft-on-crime law enforcement, there is more good news: “New York’s governor just ordered hundreds of National Guard troops to deploy inside the city’s troubled subway system.
“These Democrat-led policy changes mark a stark reversal from 2020, when the growing influence of progressives fueled a national effort to defund the police, and scale back law enforcement budgets,” the article noted.
“What we’re seeing now is a recognition that we have to do more to provide for the safety and well-being of our residents,” said Democrat Brooke Pinto, the Washington councilmember who championed the crime package.
The nation’s capital has also had to do a reality check, as crime statistics show the region was hit with the highest number of murders in more than two decades last year. A series of shocking high-profile crimes in recent months have further triggered anxiety, prompting condemnation of the city’s lax criminal justice policies.
“No section of this city can be considered safe anymore,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, said during a congressional hearing. “The Washington, D.C., City Council has passed laws that emboldened criminals and hamstrung the police.”
A reminder that we’re in an election year is all it really takes to understand why some Democrats are rebranding themselves as tough on crime.
Cosmetic Changes in an Election Year?
As welcome as these changes are, they are likely cosmetic, critics say, inasmuch as the underlying approach to crime remains the same. A Fox News report highlighted this state of affairs in a report this week about a New York City nurse who was brutally assaulted by an illegal immigrant at Jacobi Medical Center.
Nurse Chelsea Mora was reportedly attacked by Edward Johnson, a repeat offender, when she approached him to do a medical intake at the Center. Mora said Johnson hit her in the face, giving her a corneal hematoma.
“We work 12 hours to 16-hour shifts to help sick people, to help the most vulnerable in our society, and we get abused,” Mora told Fox News. “And these things just fall under the guise of mental health disorders, and get ignored. These people need to be institutionalized, not let back on the streets.”
According to ABC7 News, Johnson was arrested on assault charges but was given supervised release and is no longer behind bars. He was reportedly arrested 23 times before the incident at Jacobi, and has a history of attacking medical personnel dating back to 2019. He also has a psychiatric history.
“This one particular gentleman has over 20 open [law enforcement] cases, and he’s out on the streets abusing and assaulting people,” Nurse Mora continued. “We’re kind of discouraged about pressing charges when there’s an assault. When we actually do so and things go up to the court level… charges are dropped, and these criminals are back on the street. Or they serve 1 or 2 months in jail, and then they’re back out doing the same thing.”
“It seems to be a severe problem in New York City now,” Mora reflected. “I think these soft-on-crime laws aren’t helping citizens of New York, and aren’t helping healthcare staff in dealing with these criminals.”
