A far-left prosecutor with hopes of becoming the district attorney of Queens, New York received campaign backing from George Soros.
Despite reports alleging the primary race was too close to call, 31-year-old Tiffany Cabán declared victory Tuesday night over the party machine’s candidate, Queens borough president Melinda Katz, who is calling for a recount. Cabán is just the latest far-left prosecutor to be elected to a DA’s office nationwide with the help of Soros’ money.
Soros-backed candidate declares win
Progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) celebrated Cabán’s apparent victory this week, which seemed to echo Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking primary win last summer against the Democratic establishment.
However, Cabán’s fight may not have been as much of an underdog battle as imagined. The Working Families Party, which supported Cabán’s candidacy, received $70,000 from the Soros-funded Justice and Public Safety PAC.
A self-described “queer Latina,” Cabán has won plaudits from the far-left for her plans to drastically change the criminal justice system in Queens. The public defender will bring a social justice agenda to the DA’s office, blurring the lines between political activism and prosecution.
Cabán’s “decarceral” approach will involve “prosecuting less” — that is, prosecuting the enemies according to her Marxist analysis (like landlords, bosses, police officers, and ICE agents) — while decriminalizing low-level drug offenses and “crimes of poverty” like jumping turnstiles and even prostitution. She also wants to end cash bail, shorten sentences for violent felons, and close down Rikers Island’s prison without replacing it.
Indeed, Cabán sees violent criminal offenders as victims who need therapy rather than punishment. Her approach to “prosecution” is straight out of Marxist theory: prisons are holding cells for the poor, and “exploitative” bosses should be prosecuted for “wage theft.”
A simple way to sum up this agenda might be “punish the rich, empty the prisons.” In fact, that seems to be not far off from what Cabán envisions; the Indypendent reported: “In a race where most candidates are calling themselves ‘progressives,’ she prefers the label ‘decarceral.’ Her goal is to keep as many people as possible out of jail.”
Planning for pushback
While Cabán’s apparent win — which still hasn’t been officially called — was met with cries of victory on the left, some former New York prosecutors and police officers are predicting that she will face resistance from the more traditionally conservative Queens DA office. (Although, let’s face it: any prosecutor’s office is “conservative” by comparison with Cabán’s platform.)
“I’m sure a bunch of people there who have been there their entire careers, who never anticipated or thought about new leadership – particularly leadership like this – they’re going to look to get out,” said Kenneth Montgomery, a former assistant prosecutor in the Kings County district attorney’s office.
Woke prosecutors – with Soros’ money
The push for Cabán to win in New York is part of a nationwide effort by the left to infiltrate and radically reform the criminal justice system from within. Otherwise quiet local DA races have become prime targets in the left’s agenda — and it’s not a conspiracy theory: Cabán is just one of several “woke prosecutors” who have claimed power, often with the backing of Soros’s Justice and Public Safety PAC, according to The New American.
Many of these prosecutors share a philosophy of prosecuting criminals less while targeting police. They tend to see crime as a “public health” problem, like polluted water or a disease epidemic, rather than an act of wrongdoing by an individual with free will. To them, the solution to crime is not to punish wrongdoers, but to target “oppressive” authorities that are blamed for crime instead — like the police, the wealthy, and so on.
A recent national controversy involving “woke prosecutors” dealt with Chicago’s Cook County prosecutor Kim Foxx, who dropped charges against hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett. Soros poured $408,000 into Foxx’s election.
In Philadelphia, Soros-backed DA Larry Krasner has been blamed for a rise in violent crime in his city. The city’s police union has accused Krasner of prejudice in favor of criminals and against police and victims of violence. Krasner, who backed Cabán, received nearly $1.5 million from Soros.
Soros also poured more than $1 million into two recent local DA races in Virginia through his Justice and Public Safety PAC. On June 11, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti and Steve Descano unseated the incumbents in the Arlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office and Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office, respectively.
Indeed, if confirmed, Cabán’s victory is just the latest win for Soros in an effort to replace law and order with chaos. How long can we let this continue?
No comments: