George Soros vows he won’t stop backing woke DAs despite urban crime spikes By Mark Moore for NY Post
Left-wing billionaire George Soros insisted Monday that soft-on-crime district attorneys he’s backed to the tune of millions of dollars are making the criminal justice system “more effective and just” — and warned that “I have no intention of stopping” his support for them.
The Hungary-born Soros, 91, argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Sunday that the agenda pushed by top prosecutors like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was both “popular” and “effective.”
“This agenda includes prioritizing the resources of the criminal-justice system to protect people against violent crime. It urges that we treat drug addiction as a disease, not a crime. And it seeks to end the criminalization of poverty and mental illness,” he wrote, later adding: “The goal is not defunding the police but restoring trust between the police and the policed, a partnership that fosters the solving of crimes.”
Soros published the op-ed amid a backlash against lax district attorneys that led San Francisco voters to recall DA Chesa Boudin over spikes in shoplifting, open-air drug dealing and broad-daylight assaults, often against Asian Americans. Down the coast in Los Angeles, another recall effort is targeting DA George Gascon — who got nearly $3 million in campaign funds from Soros.
Closer to home, Bragg — whose campaign received $1 million from Soros via the Color of Change political action committee — has come under fire for allowing habitual criminals out of jail, while prosecuting ordinary New Yorkers for defending themselves.
In his op-ed, Soros blamed increases in crime across the nation on “a disturbing rise in mental illness among young people due to the isolation imposed by Covid lockdowns, a pullback in policing in the wake of public criminal-justice reform protests, and increases in gun trafficking.
