From FreeBeacon.com…
George Soros spent more than $40 million in the past decade to elect scores of liberal prosecutors in half of America’s largest jurisdictions, many of which are now roiled by crime.
The Democratic megadonor has backed 75 so-called justice reform prosecutors through direct contributions, PACs, and other third-party entities, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund revealed in a June report.
Though many had little prosecutorial experience when elected, they represent 72 million Americans in some of the nation’s most populous municipalities. Ten Soros prosecutors, including Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner (D.) and Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon (D.), received $13 million in just the last four years, going on to win races where they had vastly outraised their competition—sometimes by as much as 90 percent. In each race, Soros was the single greatest donor to the campaign.
“Our study shows for the first time, Soros’s funding and installation of these district attorneys is fundamentally dismantling the criminal justice system as we know it,” Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund president Jason Johnson told the Washington Free Beacon.
The report discloses the power progressive criminal prosecutors wield in the American justice system—and the potential effects of that influence on crime. The FBI in 2020 reported its highest single-year increase in homicides—a 30 percent jump from the previous year. A year later, 12 cities, including Krasner’s Philadelphia and Soros-backed district attorney José Garza’s Austin, Texas, broke their all-time homicide records. According to the report, more than 40 percent of homicides and a third of all violent and property crimes in 2021 occurred in jurisdictions run by Soros prosecutors.
From cities like Seattle and Los Angeles, to wealthy suburbs near Washington, D.C., to provincial counties in Mississippi and Wisconsin, the prosecutors have radically overhauled bail laws and pursued lightened sentencing in an effort to reduce incarceration. Soros began his quiet effort to remake America’s criminal justice system in 2014, donating $50 million to the ACLU for justice reform activism. He followed up in 2016 by funneling more than $3 million into seven local campaigns, including to Cook County district attorney Kim Foxx (D.), the controversial Chicago prosecutor known for dropping charges against Jussie Smollett, who committed a hate crime hoax.
Johnson told the Free Beacon career prosecutors are becoming a thing of the past as former tax attorneys and ACLU lawyers have ascended to top prosecutorial positions on Soros’s dime.
Soros’s network of justice reform groups includes more than 500 PACs, dark money groups, and nonprofits, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund report notes. Some, such as the Drug Policy Alliance, where Soros serves as chairman, are open about their affiliation. Others, like the Tides Center, are “donor pass-through organization[s],” which launder donations from Soros’s philanthropic juggernauts, including the Open Society Foundations, to subentities and political PACs.
Through a cluster of statewide public safety PACs, Soros donated more than a million dollars each to Krasner, Gascon, Foxx, and Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg (D.). He also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Virginia prosecutors Buta Biberaj (D.) and Steve Descano (D.), both of whom have received scrutiny in office for failing to prosecute violent criminals and allowing repeat offenders to victimize others. In a New York Times op-ed last week, Descano also pledged not to prosecute illegal abortions if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this month.
