OPINION:
Two weeks ago, Vice President Kamala Harris finally did something for which she will be remembered. She put the president, their administration and their party firmly on record as siding with the progressive prosecutors who refuse to prosecute crime. The lack of prosecution has consigned millions of her fellow citizens to live in fear and afraid to leave their homes to shop, visit friends, drive or even walk down the streets of their own neighborhoods.
Ms. Harris broke a tied Senate vote to confirm Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins as President Biden’s nominee as U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. Ms. Rollins is the very model of a modern, woke prosecutor. Like Chicago’s District Attorney Kim Foxx, Los Angeles’ George Gascon, Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner and San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, Ms. Rollins is one of the progressive prosecutors who campaigned with financing from George Soros.
His candidates have let convicted criminals out of jail to roam the streets assuring them that in many cases they won’t be arrested or prosecuted for any additional crimes. Police morale has plummeted in jurisdictions where Mr. Soros wins, and crime — including murder — is skyrocketing.
When Ms. Rollins was first elected in 2018, she pledged that her office would no longer prosecute some 15 categories of crime. Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, drug possession even with the intent to sell, malicious destruction of property and trespassing became legal in Boston. Her treatment of the Boston police suggests she regards them as a bunch of armed, racist thugs for whom she has no respect whatsoever.
Ms. Rollins has been open about her disdain for whites and the police. She’s complained about having to even listen to “white” men and, after the George Floyd shooting in Minneapolis, told a press conference that she was “exhausted” because “white police officers shoot us in the street as if we were animals.”
Like her fellow Soros-backed colleagues, Boston’s top prosecutor minimizes the very existence of a spike in crime. In Chicago, where Ms. Foxx was the first of the Soros-backed prosecutors elected, violent crime has skyrocketed, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot has steadfastly backed her. After Ms. Foxx decided that theft under a thousand-dollar value would not result in any charges, the smash-and-grab raids on retail establishments that began in Chicago and equally criminal friendly San Francisco have spread. Asked who was responsible, her honor told reporters the blame is with the retailers who should hire more security because, among other things, fancy women’s purses naturally attract thieves.
Confronted with questions about the Windy City’s spiraling murder rate, the mayor took a page from Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krassner, another disciple of Mr. Soros, who simply ignored the statistics and said there is no increasing crime in his city. That led Philadelphia’s Black former Mayor Michael Nutter to comment, “the worst, most ignorant, and most insulting comments I have ever heard spoken by an elected official.” Ms. Lightfoot, perhaps channeling Mr. Krassner, claimed at a recent press conference that if one ignores the murders, Chicago’s crime rate is lower than it has been in a quarter century.
Former Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass notes that his city’s media has been prone to simply accept such statements. Ignoring the murders isn’t inflammatory enough: Ms. Lightfoot, like Mr. Krassner, was simply lying. Those who did look at the recent increases in assault, car jackings, sexual crime and theft in the city quickly pointed out that crime in all categories spiked and was not lower.
The national crime surge is real; it won’t be “spun” out of existence by woke prosecutors or the politicians who back them. The president’s decision to appoint someone like Ms. Rollins as a federal prosecutor is shocking. The universal support she received from Democratic senators and the tie vote cast by Ms. Harris makes it clear that the president and his party were willing to put themselves firmly in the corner of Mr. Soros, violent criminals and their enablers. Oh, they’ll come up with some rhetoric to cover what they did, but it won’t matter. They are on record, and one suspects they’ll have to live with what they’ve done.
They believe spin trumps reality, but it doesn’t. We have politicians in Washington telling us that inflation is more myth than reality, that a big spending bill will fix inflation, that closing our oil production has nothing to do with gas prices — everything but that the Earth is flat. One is reminded of Chico Marx in the old movie “Duck Soup,” who, when caught in the act, asked, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”
• David Keene is editor-at-large for The Washington Times.
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