His re-election, with the bitter taste of impunity, went almost unnoticed. In Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, district attorney, icon of the reformist left, won more than 75% of the votes in the November 5 election. Two weeks earlier, the body of Kada Scott, a 23-year-old former Miss USA pageant candidate, was found in the vacant lot of an abandoned school in the Germantown neighborhood: a bullet in the head, buried in haste. His alleged murderer, Keon King, was not his first arrest: he had been incarcerated for beating his ex-girlfriend, then released in the spring. In September, the police arrested him again for car theft and illegal possession of a weapon; Krasner’s office chose to drop the charges due to lack of sufficient evidence.
For Donald Trump, this drama sums it all up “the disaster of the Soros DAs” (DA, for District Attorneys, Editor’s note), these progressive prosecutors financed by the networks of billionaire George Soros, accused of preferring rehabilitation to punishment. Krasner is the prototype: elected in 2017 thanks to nearly 1.7 million dollars from organizations linked to George Soros, he built his career on the promise of gentler justice: fewer prisons, fewer bails, fewer minimum sentences. Eight years later, he defended the same line during his campaign: “We do not have a crisis of crime, but a crisis of confidence. »
The duel is played on the ground, that is to say in the courts
Over the course of a decade, Soros has invested more than $50 million in local prosecutors’ campaigns, according to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. An unprecedented amount: never before has an individual had so much influence on the recruitment of American prosecutors. Through political action committees (PACs), the financier has supported more than 70 jurisdictions. In Chicago, he financed Kim Foxx to the tune of $2 million; in California, Diana Becton in Contra Costa County received $652,000. In May 2021, Soros also contributed $1 million to Color of Change, a progressive organization supporting criminal reform. This committee then supported the campaign of New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg, notably through advertising spending and field operations. It was the same Bragg who, two years later, in 2023, indicted Trump in the Stormy Daniels affair, accusing him of having concealed a payment intended to cover up an extramarital affair.
Since his re-election, the Republican has launched a political and legal crusade against this nebula. Last August, he called for the indictment of George Soros and his son Alexander, respectively founder and chairman of the board of directors of Open Society, under the federal law against organized crime. Between the 95-year-old billionaire and the president, the duel is being played out on the ground, that is to say in the courts, the heart of the American judicial system. Democrats, of course, are crying out for a new McCarthyism, but the question Trump asks is not unfounded: How far can a billionaire fund a parallel legal strategy?
Because the ideological battle is no longer being played out at the Capitol, but in the districts. This is where detention, drug control and security policies are decided. And it is in these low-profile local elections that the recomposition of America is being played out. George Soros himself has never hidden his intentions. In a column published in 2022 in the Wall Street Journalthe billionaire explained bluntly: “The funds I provide give reasonable reform candidates a voice in the public eye. » And to add, in the same logic: “We must recognize that black Americans are five times more likely to be sent to prison than white people. It is an injustice that undermines our democracy. »
Targeted investments
Behind the humanist veneer of the speech, Soros organizes this conquest of power at the base. In an article published in July 2023 in the City Journalmagazine of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative New York think tank, Thomas Hogan, former district attorney of Chester County, precisely described the strategy of the founder of Open Society in local justice.
After having financed national Democratic candidates for a long time, the billionaire “changed strategy to focus intensely on criminal justice”. True to his investor logic, Hogan writes, “Soros has found a way to bet a little to get a lot, his ultimate bet being that funding enough radical prosecutors will bring about structural change in the justice system”. A winning calculation: its targeted investments, sometimes only a few tens of thousands of dollars per candidate, have made it possible, according to Hogan, to“influence jurisdictions covering nearly 20% of the American population”. But the result, he continues, proved disastrous: “Cities under the influence of prosecutors supported by Soros are less safe today than ten years ago”marked by the surge in homicides, the increase in property crimes and the exodus of the middle classes fleeing the metropolises.
Elon Musk also intends to play a role in this reconquest
For Trump, the issue is not only to denounce “Soros DAs”but to regain a foothold by activating already existing levers: supporting challengers in the primaries or encouraging the impeachment procedures provided for by law and strengthening federal prerogatives on questions of public security.
In this reconquest, Elon Musk also intends to play a role. The boss of “elect prosecutors who refuse to prosecute criminals” and who “undermine the very fabric of civilization”. Musk plans to create a super PAC modeled on those of the billionaire, but intended to support conservative candidates for prosecutors.
This counter-offensive still needs to go beyond slogans. It is in cities won by violence – yesterday, Philadelphia buried young Kada Scott – that the promises of justice are measured. George Soros continues to finance those who claim to give it back.
