Time to tip the dominos on “progressive prosecutors”

Earlier this month progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin was ousted from his post in San Francisco per a special recall election. The recall was spurred on by Boudin’s radical anti-prosecution stance on crime — though it shouldn’t have been a surprise to the citizens of San Francisco, as Boudin did exactly what he said he was going to do when elected. Thankfully it took voters in San Francisco just two years to say “enough” — and this happened in a heavily progressive city.

Now Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon is under fire for his similar anti-prosecution stance on crime. Unfortunately, Gascon’s policies appear to have played a significant role in the murder of two police officers last week. 

When Gascon took office in 2021, he issued a special directive that prohibited assistant District Attorneys from applying “strikes” against defendants who had previous criminal convictions. Justin Flores had previous convictions when in 2021 he was arrested with a firearm. Flores should have faced three years in prison for the offense according to Dmitry Gorin, a former deputy district attorney. Instead, due to Gascon’s directive, the DA’s office accepted a far weaker plea agreement than normal, resulting in Flores serving no appreciable time in custody. Last Tuesday Flores allegedly stabbed a person at a Los Angeles motel, and then fatally shot the first two responding police officers.

After these murders, a recall committee announced they had compiled over a half-million recall signatures from Los Angeles voters and would be formally seeking Gascon’s removal via a recall vote.

Gascon and Boudin are just two of dozens of progressive prosecutors who have run for local district attorney positions around the country, supported by tens of millions of dollars put towards the effort by billionaire George Soros through his Foundation to Promote Open Society.

The New York Post reports,

For the last several years, billionaire philanthropist George Soros has been quietly financing a revolution in criminal justice reform, doling out tens of millions of dollars to progressive candidates in district attorney races throughout the country amid movements to abolish bail and defund the police.

In 2018, Soros’s son Alexander donated $100,000 to an independent expenditure committee intended to support Rep. Keith Ellison’s bid to become attorney general of Minnesota, an amount that represents slightly less than half of all funds raised by the committee.

Minnesotans elected Ellison as the attorney general in 2018 and elected district attorneys like John Choi in Ramsey County, and Mike Freeman in Hennepin County. All ran on progressive policies, and collectively they have worked to undermine the balance in the criminal justice system by leading the anti-police movement, advocating bail reform, announcing policies against prosecuting swaths of crimes, and even refusing to use legally obtained evidence in prosecutions. Unfortunately, Choi has no opponent in the 2022 election, while the Democrat-endorsed candidate to replace Freeman is Mary Moriarty, who most recently served as Hennepin County’s public defender before being ousted.

Minnesotans can’t afford to make the same mistakes again. Voters must be better informed and reject progressive prosecutors who have proven their willingness and intent to undermine our criminal justice system.