Heritage Research on Rogue Prosecutors Cited by GOP House Members at NYC Crime Hearing

Manhattan’s rogue prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, has become a household name from his indictment of former President Donald Trump.

And on April 17, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing in New York City to highlight Bragg’s soft-on-crime approach and relied in part on The Heritage Foundation’s “rogue prosecutor” research to rebut claims made by the main Democratic witness. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Bragg’s pro-criminal, anti-victim policies stood front and center at the Judiciary Committee’s rare field hearing in New York City, at which the Republican majority invited crime victims, victims’ families, and local leaders to testify about the devastating consequences of those policies.

We wrote an entire chapter on Bragg in our forthcoming book “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities.” George Soros is a left-wing billionaire who lavishes millions of dollars on liberal causes and candidates.

Rather than defend Bragg’s policies themselves, the Democratic members of the committee invited two witnesses to the field hearing, who instead claimed that red states have a higher murder rate than blue ones, citing a short article published by the supposedly centrist (though actually leftist) group Third Way.

It was an odd tactic, especially considering that we thoroughly rebutted that study with an actual research paper, proving what all criminologists know about crime; namely, that violent crime is demographically and geographically concentrated in inner cities.

Even if we set aside the methodological issues with how the witness and his co-author arrived at their thesis, as we explained in our November 2022 rebuttal, “The Blue City Murder Problem,” “[s]tate-level [crime] data are generally meaningless—except as a tool with which to score political points.” That’s exactly what the study’s co-author, a former aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has been clumsily trying to do.

Left-leaning politicians, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, though, seized on the study’s results and have been using them for their own crass political purposes, too, despite the fact that they are bunk.

Despite ample opportunities to respond to our criticisms, Jim Kessler, the Democratic witness and the co-author of the dubious study, never did so, even at the hearing.

That’s why when he reiterated many of his same suspect talking points under oath in front of the Judiciary Committee, Republican members easily rebutted him with our research on the issue.

Reps. Mike Johnson, R-La., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., cited or read verbatim from our report and entered it into the Congressional Record.

As Biggs and Johnson noted, our report shows that of the 30 cities with the highest homicide rates, 27 of them have Democratic mayors. “And within those 30 cities there are at least 14 Soros-backed or Soros-inspired rogue prosecutors.”

It’s these cities with rogue prosecutors that have suffered the most. These 14 cities with rogue prosecutors accounted for “68 percent of homicides in the 30 top homicide cities in the United States” as of last June.

And when you remove the jurisdictions run by these rogues from the state homicide rates, those rates of course fall—precipitously. For instance, Missouri’s homicide rate falls by about 35% when the city and county of St. Louis are removed from its totals. And Illinois’ homicide rate falls by a mind-boggling 55% when Chicago is removed. The Soros-backed rogue prosecutors there are Kim Gardner and Kim Foxx, respectively.

In other words, the “state homicide rate” chart relied upon by the House Democrats completely changes when you remove the crime-infested, homicide hell-hole cities run by Democrats. 

Of course, that doesn’t come as a surprise to the victims who testified, many of whom were Democrats themselves, but who are fed up with Bragg’s refusal to hold criminals accountable. 

As Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the New York Detectives’ Endowment Association, told the committee, bail reform is not working in New York; there’s a failure to prosecute violent crime; too many crimes are being downgraded; victims are being ignored; and violent teens need to be tried in adult court. 

As Biggs read from our report, and as we explain at length in our forthcoming book, “The Soros rogue prosecutor movement has concentrated its fire at identifying, recruiting, and funding candidates for local district attorney races.”

By elevating pro-criminal, anti-victim zealots into office, the rogue prosecutor movement destabilizes the safety of the community, treats criminals as victims, and the police as the criminals, and ignores real victims.

This dangerous social experiment cannot continue.

The House Judiciary Committee’s hearing is the first of many across the country in cities with Soros-backed rogue prosecutors. Raising public awareness is a first, and necessary, step in pushing back against it.

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