AMAC Exclusive – By Clayton Fuller
As part of the progressive push to remake America, left-wing activists and ultra-wealthy liberal elites have quietly worked to install radical candidates in local prosecutor offices throughout the country. Under the guise of combatting “systemic racism” and advancing “social justice,” these district attorneys, instead of punishing criminals, have demonized the police, undermined the justice system, and in many cases flat out refused to prosecute violent crime. However, as AMAC Newsline has previously reported, citizens are starting to fight back and remove prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law. But as communities rise up to demand change, many are wondering: where are all the conservative prosecutors?
At the national level, the Department of Justice’s recent crime statistics are a harrowing sign of the results of the left’s aims to change criminal justice. Over the past year, the country saw the largest spike in the murder rate in American history. Violent crime was up 5.6 percent from 2019. Aggravated assaults were up 30 percent. America saw 50 law enforcement officers killed in the first 8 months of 2021, which represented a 51.5 percent increase compared to the same time period in 2020.
Americans have noticed, too. According to a recent Gallup poll, 78 percent of Americans are concerned about an increase in crime. The border situation likely doesn’t help either, as the country faces a 21-year high in illegal border crossings. Aside from the uptick in human trafficking and other crimes, the crossings also drain law enforcement resources that could otherwise be used for things like preventing deadly fentanyl from entering the country. Even with fewer patrols, more fentanyl has been seized at the border in this year alone than the previous three years combined, and communities across the country will likely see more overdoses.
At the local level the results have been just as bad. Chesa Boudin, who was recently elected as the District Attorney of San Francisco, ran on a campaign to not prosecute “quality of life” crimes like shoplifting. Predictably, shoplifting in San Francisco has exploded, and 17 Walgreens have decided to close due to the thefts. Under Kim Foxx’s watch as top prosecutor in Chicago, the statistics are dreadful. Over the Labor Day weekend in the Windy City, there were at least 60 people shot, and there has been a 33 percent increase in murders over 2020. Under Mike Schmidt’s prosecutorial leadership in Portland, crime has skyrocketed. Recent data from the National Fraternal Order of Police shows that Portland’s homicide rate rose by an astounding 800 percent in the first five months of 2021 compared to the year before. At the national and local level, the left have aligned themselves with the criminals and become a party to their crimes.
It has been well-documented that billionaire George Soros had a hand in funding dozens of these prosecutors throughout the country. But he is hardly the only one. As Fox News recently showed, “cash from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg appears to have leaked into prosecutor races as part of his foundation’s larger mission to reform the criminal justice system… his cash has flowed through two nonprofits before hitting a federal PAC, which then pushed it to state-level PACs” to benefit leftist prosecutors.
While prominent individuals on the left are all in for the effort to radicalize the American justice system, what has been missing thus far is a conservative counterpunch. While the right has solid journalists like Heather MacDonald and Andy McCarthy with a background in criminal justice or prosecution, what they largely lack is a group of like-minded and well-funded candidates to actually enact change and ensure that law and order is enforced at the local level.
The good news is that conservatives already have a blueprint for success when it comes to forming such a legal movement. Despite the fact that most law school professors and faculty, as well as most lawyers in general, are extremely liberal, conservatives have forged a close-knit and effective legal community through organizations like the Federalist Society. All six of the originalists on the Supreme Court have ties to the Federalist Society, and the group has worked very effectively to install judges to the federal bench who will interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning and reject judicial activism. A similar approach to local district attorney races could yield fruitful results.
Conservatives have recognized the existential threat to law and order posed by radical leftist prosecutors. The next step is for them to take a page out of the Soros and Zuckerberg playbook and fund young candidates who will help undo the damage done by leftist district attorneys and restore traditional notions of law and order to cities and communities that desperately need it.
Clay Fuller served as a White House Fellow from 2018-2019 advising senior Trump administration officials on special operations oversight at the Department of Defense and advising the Office of the Vice President on countering the opioid epidemic. He is an experienced federal, military, and Appalachian prosecutor as well as a reserve military officer with a decade of national security experience. Follow him on Twitter @Clay4MainStreet and on Facebook at Clay Fuller: Main Street Patriot.