Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) is targeting left-wing prosecutors who “really view themselves as social workers” in the 2023 election cycle.
Miyares joined Breitbart News Saturday, telling host Matthew Boyle his effort — the Protect Americans Action Fund — will be a paradigm shift in how conservatives view local prosecutor elections.
“Candidly, conservatives are kind of asleep at the switch,” the Virginia Republican said. “You have these large, left-wing special interest groups that realized, ‘Hey, we don’t have to change the change laws, we don’t necessarily need to win governors mansions or state legislatures, we can win these local prosecutors, these district attorneys races.’”
“I say it’s the most important election that people rarely pay attention to,” he concluded.
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“They don’t have to change the laws in their state capital, they just decide not to enforce entire categories of law,” Miyares explained. “So, you see in places like New York and others — they’ll declare entire categories of the criminal code they will no longer enforce. The officer can arrest somebody for breaking the law, but if you have a prosecutor who immediately dismisses the charges, you’ve essentially legalized in some cases carjacking.”
“When you have a criminal first, victim last mindset, that has led to an enormous explosion of violent crime,” he continued. “You have officers that don’t even bother to charge people with certain crimes because they know they don’t have any backup.”
Calling the left-wing ideology on prosecuting crimes an “academic theory,” the Old Dominion attorney explained how crime is devastating for communities beyond the implications of the crime itself.
“What’s frustrating for me is a lot of people can point to and say, ‘Hey, you know, poverty can lead to an uptick in crime,’ but crime also can create poverty,” he said. “Two thirds of all new jobs created in America are created by small business owners, they don’t locate in high crime areas.”
Small business owners are closing their doors due to what has effectively been legalized larceny in many areas of the country.
Miyares started the Protect Americans Action Fund as part of building a counter to the enormous amount of money left-wing groups and people — such as George Soros — put into prosecutor races.
“The idea is: you have the Republican Governors Association, you have the Republican Attorney General Association, you have the campaign committees for Congress and Senate, and so you don’t have any entity that’s there to help these prosecutor races where you’ll have these left wing groups come in, will drop in $200,000 the last two weeks in a race and that will dwarf any spending a district attorney candidate can raise and they just swamp them and they will win seats sometimes in suburban areas that have gone for Trump,” he said.
Those left-wing prosecutors will then end up running their offices like a “catch and release program.”
“Our goal of Protecting Americans Action Fund is to get these people the resources that are pro-law enforcement to stand up against these far left-wing forces that, right now, are trying to push a really radical anti-police, anti-victim agenda that is hurting too many Americans all across the country,” Miyares explained.
Saying that elections have consequences, Miyares said “public safety simply wasn’t a priority when you had a left wing monopoly in Richmond under the previous governor.”
Describing some examples in Virginia, Miyares said that the Northern Virginia region “had a lot of very far-left prosecutors” who “failed their first duty, which is to protect the public” when he, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) ran for office in 2021.
He explained that the murder rate was the highest it had been in 20 years at the time.
“In Fairfax, you have a very notorious left wing prosecutor there that, you know, when you have a criminal first, victim last mindset, he cut a deal,” he said. “You had a horrific case of a child rapist, a five-year-old had been raped over the course of a year and the perpetrator was eligible for a life sentence. And [the prosecutor] thought that was too hard for a child rapist, and so his life sentence was reduced without consulting the victims, and he’ll be eligible for parole.”
“In one of the localities in Northern Virginia, an individual got out on bond on a domestic violence charge,” he continued. “He essentially got released and immediately attacked and murdered his victim with a hammer who he had just been abusing.”
“When you know that the person victimizing you going to be right back on the street, what incentive do you have to go forward to the police and try to get the person arrested when they’re just gonna be back as soon as they process the paperwork?” he asked rhetorically.
“If you want to lower crime, you go after repeat violent offenders,” he concluded. “And you need prosecutors that understand that, not prosecutors that decide they’re gonna push things like getting rid of cash bail, have a revolving door.”
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.
