Decoding the Impact of Soros-Funded DAs: A Biblical Perspective on Crime, Punishment, and Community Engagement

Rick Green: 0:12
Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders. This is the intersection of faith and the culture. We're always taking on hot topics, but we're looking at them from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Hope that you're doing the same thing. If you want to help save the country, number one thing you can do is saturate yourself in God's Word every time we're in the answer book. When we're into truth, we recognize the lie better, we're able to respond to the lie, better we have truth to share with other people. So number one thing you can do if you want to save America is be saturated in God's Word and then build community. Find other people that you can study with, that you can lock shields with and be engaged in your culture. And then, third, tend the garden. Those are the three big ones Right there. You've got to be saturated in God's Word, You've got to be absolutely building community with people in your church, your family, all around you, and then you've got to be tending the garden. And so here on WallBuilders, what we do is we talk about a biblical application. How do you get a biblical perspective, a constitutional perspective and a historical perspective on all those hot issues of the day so that you can in fact tend the garden Now. We've got a whole week on that in our Biblical Citizenship class when David teaches about that there from the museum at WallBuilders. But you can take that entire class, eight week class on Biblical Citizenship for free by going to BiblicalCitizens.com. Or, if you want, you can get the DVDs and the workbook and just do a self-study at home. Or you may want to host a class at your church or in your you know, maybe in your own living room. But there's lots of ways that you can be a part of the solution. We encourage you to check that out today at WallBuilders.com. Hi, David. Tim Zack Smith from the Heritage Foundation will be with us. A little later. We're going to be talking about the Soros funded DAs. Now, that's a little bit of a catch phrase. We say that a lot these days in the media world Soros funded DAs. So we probably need to know what that means. Obviously, Soros is seen, as you know, a very negative influence on the culture. He's very much for socialism, funds a lot of the left-wing activities in the country. But what is a Soros funded DA?

David Barton: 2:12
A Soros funded DA stands for District Attorney and, by the way, soros is George Soros. He's Hungarian by background. He was, last I knew, worth about 19 billion bucks and he's pledged about 17 billion to change fundamentally the politics in America. So he is really open Marxist, open socialist, everything wrong, and so he's putting money into it. And so District Attorney, he's getting these guys elected and he's had about a 90% success rate on electing DAs and then they don't prosecute crime when they get in. And so what we're going to cover today is really more like a Good News Friday kind of a program, in the sense that people aren't buying that anymore. They elected these guys, they got in and they're actually doing what Jesus said and judge a tree by its fruits. And these guys are producing terrible fruit and they're being thrown at a fairly high rate. So we'll talk about that. Let me start with one Bible verse from three different translations that kind of summarizes the essence of what happens when you get a Soros kind of DA that does not want to prosecute crime. Ecclesiastes 811. This is the new international version says when the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people's hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong. So if you don't prosecute and if you don't do it quickly, you're going to encourage more wrong doing. New living translation says when a crime is not punished quickly, people feel it is safe to do wrong. So now you got a lot of courage to do wrong because you know you're not going to get prosecuted. You feel safe when you're doing wrong, which is that's exactly the opposite of what you want. And the third version is the English standard version. It says because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of children and man is set to do evil. So now you have professional criminals that are going to get turned loose. It's not just random, you know teenagers doing crazy stuff. You're going to have the professional step in. The heart of the children is fully set to do evil. So those are three different versions of that verse and they all kind of capture the essence. So here's kind of the good new side. These Soros funded district attorneys have been going really for some of them three to five years.

Rick Green: 4:21
And, by the way, David, if I could interrupt just to zero in on what you've said, because you laid out the Bible verses, the biblical perspective. There's also just a common sense thing here, right? I mean, God's way is not only right, it works best. And so you just gave the biblical foundation for why, when everybody said defund the police or don't prosecute, and you know up to $900, go ahead and take it and we're not going to, I mean, all that most people knew in their gut, like common sense was like that doesn't make sense, that's going to encourage more crime. But yet you just laid out also the biblical foundation for that. So I just think it's great to be able to get both of those things so that people understand. Hey, listen, god himself said don't do what they're doing right now.

David Barton: 5:00
And I'll just throw to that, Rick, something that kind of guides me is Deuteronomy 624. And it's back when God was giving all these laws to the children of Israel. And they gave them laws on criminal justice, but also on economics, on land use, on immigration, gave them all these laws and a lot of them were so counterintuitive for what they had after 400 years in Egypt. So they're coming out of Egypt, they think like Egyptians, they have lived like Egyptians, they eat like Egyptians, they're like Egyptians. And God says but here's how I want you guys doing it, and a lot of those things would have been absolutely counterculture for the Israelites at that time. But what God told him in Deuteronomy 624, he says everything I command you this day is for your good, to keep you alive, so that you'll prosper. And so I've gotten to the point where when I read something in the Bible and I go I don't really know if I agree with that I just go back to Deuteronomy 6.24. Everything he says is for our benefit, for our good, to cause us a prosper. And so you know, there might have been all this sympathy at one time with all these people who are deprived and they should be able to get stuff out of stores. No, no, no. Everything he told us, including punishing crime quickly, is for our benefit, for our good.

Tim Barton: 6:08
Well, and I think, specifically to add a little context when you're saying that maybe there's sympathy for people who are trying to get stuff out of stores, one of the arguments has been that the people who are doing the most shoplifting are the people who are the hungriest, who don't have the food. They just right what Alexander O'Cawthorough Cortez said they just they want a loaf of bread. And yet when you look at the stores most recently that have been highlighted for being targeted by some of these massive groups of individuals that are showing up, that they're showing up and they're stealing from different shoe stores, like they're taking Nike or Jordan shoes, they're stealing these Gucci purses and things that the Apple store.

David Barton: 6:47
They hit in Philadelphia.

Tim Barton: 6:48
Not at all related to a loaf of bread. And so to your point where, early on, you might have been able to argue that these individuals, they're just trying to provide sustenance for themselves, they're trying to just stay alive. We've now come to the place where you cannot and be intellectually honest and make that argument, because the stores that are being ransacked are not, by and large, grocery stores. In fact, if you go to grocery stores and this could be Walmart and so many of these now cities they are having to put so many things behind a lock and a key. They're having to. I mean everything from different kinds of shampoos and things that you're thinking. Why medication? Why are we having to hide some of these things? Because when people were showing up to shoplift things, they were shoplifting things that they could resell, that it's some kind of value that they could take and do something with that. This is not sustaining themselves, because you don't go to a supermarket and they have all the bags of chips, they have all the loaf of bread behind a lock and a key. No, it's their electronics, it's their medication, it's these kind of things that they're securing, because those are the things that have been targeted, because there is a resell value or a trade value. There's a level of value to those goods that is different than the loaf of bread. So, to your point, this is no longer an argument that can be made in any kind of justifiable sense, saying that they're just trying to provide it for themselves. And so now, when you still have these district attorneys, you're saying we're not going to prosecute people if they're stealing less than $1,000 worth of goods because they're just trying to survive. No, you're not stealing Nike shoes. You're not stealing Jordan shoes or Gucci purses or an Apple product trying to survive on the street. This is something much more sinister than someone trying to steal a loaf of bread Like this isn't the Aladdin Disney movie, where he's trying to just stay alive with a loaf of bread and an Apple. That's not what's happening right now. It's something far beyond that.

Rick Green: 8:49
No, it isn't Apple. It is an Apple, it's just an.

David Barton: 8:52
Apple phone, that's right. Different kind of.

Tim Barton: 8:55
Apple. I actually thought that when I was saying it I thought, well, I'm not going to worry about it, Right, I'm going to move on.

David Barton: 8:59
But then Rick didn't move on.

Tim Barton: 9:00
yeah, Right, but I mean really to that point. This is something that, when we talk about the George Soros Funded District Attorneys, George Soros has helped elect people that have an ideology that is very much of a Marxist ideology that people are in groups and in groups there's only the oppressed and the oppressor, and if you're in the group that you've been oppressed, then you have the right to do this, and you have people on this Marxist ideology side, like the Iber Max Kendi, who says that the way you overcome racism was with more racism, and therefore people that have darker skin. They can't be guilty of these crimes. It's reparations that's owed them, and literally there's people arguing this is reparations owed them. This is part of the issue that we have seen permeating the nation over the last several years, and it's being defended by these George Soros-funded district attorneys.

David Barton: 9:52
So what's happened is in recent years Soros has put nearly $40 million into these local type of races and these are definitely down-ballot local races where you're looking at 4, 5, 6% turnout kind of stuff. 40 million in that he's successfully gotten about 90% of his candidates elected and out of the 90% that's about 70 that are currently serving in office. But just in recent weeks and months there's about a dozen of these guys that have had to leave office. They're really embattled because of really soaring crime rates and everything else. So just running through a couple of these real fast this includes St Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner, who resigned in May. Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, who was removed last year by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Baltimore City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who just lost her recent primary after being hit with a federal indictment. Chelsea Aboldon, who is recalled in San Francisco, cook County, which is Chicago State Attorney Kim Fox, nassan April. She'll not seek reelection over the outrage of all the high crime in Chicago. And you've got a Philadelphia District Attorney, larry Krasner, who's been impeached by the house because he's letting crime go through the roof and not prosecuting. So there is a trend starting to come back and this is even in blue states that even in blue states they're saying this is ridiculous. So Zack Smith, who's with Heritage Foundation, has been keeping up with all this. This is something he really spends a lot of time on, seeing what's happened to these Soros District Attorney kind of things, the Soros DA project and he's got some really good news on what is happening and it kind of just illustrates what we're talking about here. So that's the reason I say this is in some ways it's kind of like a Good News Friday, in that it is good news with what's starting to happen, with the way people are responding to not liking the increase in crime, and they're really gravitating back to a biblical position, whether they know it or not.

Rick Green: 11:47
Stay with us, folks. Zack Smith, our special guest from Heritage Foundation, when we return. You're listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 12:03
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American History. Alexis de Tocqueville, a political official from France, traveled to the United States in 1831 and penned his observations in the now-famous book Democracy in America. Being from France, what he found in America was completely unexpected to him, he reported upon my arrival in the United States. The religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention, and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this. In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions, but in America I found that they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country. de Tocqueville recognize that it was biblical Christianity and the morals it produced that made America great? For more information about Alexis de Tocqueville and the positive influence of Christianity in early America, go to WallBuilders.com.

Rick Green: 13:01
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Zack Smith is with us from the Heritage Foundation. Zack, thanks for coming on. Man, Of course, Thanks for having me on. Hey, looks like a little bit of good news out of these. You know Soros-funded DAs that have been destroying cities all over America with their lack of action and sometimes their two-tiered justice action, but looks like more than one now have resigned and maybe we see the trend go in the right direction. So we're glad to have you on to talk about this. What are you seeing, and who are the ones that have finally given up and left office?

Zack Smith: 13:36
Well, look this is a very tragic phenomenon. Wherever these prosecutors are in office, their policies, your wreaking havoc, their communities are suffering and, of course, crime rates are increasing. What else could happen when you have a district attorney in office who has said they're not going to prosecute crime and who have in fact not prosecuted crime? And so in places like Chicago, new York, los Angeles, san Francisco, you've seen violent crime rates absolutely shoot through the roof. Things like murder, things like rape, things like robbery, shootings have increased, and so these communities are suffering in a very real way. Now you mentioned some of these rogue prosecutors have been kicked out of office. Things are so bad in San Francisco which is no conservative action that they even kick their rogue radical prosecutor, chase Sebudian, out of office. You've seen some, like Marilyn Mosby and Baltimore. She's lost her reelection bid. Kim Fox in Chicago has said she is not going to run for reelection. And then still others have been removed from office, like Andrew Warner, monique Warrell in Florida, or have left under a cloud of uncertainty and impending removal, like Kim Garger in St Louis. And so there is some hope for good news. There's some cause for good news, but there's still cause for concern to Rick and the reason I say that right now, there is still more than 70 of these rogue, radical, soros-backed district attorneys around the country and millions of people are still suffering under their rule.

Rick Green: 15:05
Yeah, the impact is significant and you nailed it. You basically give an invitation to criminals and say we're not going to prosecute those things, so have at it, have fun. And then, of course, we've seen the other side of it, where it's political persecution whenever you're on the wrong side of it. This is essentially the outcome of social justice instead of blind justice, equal justice. So it's bad, bad news in the communities where it's happening, but to see some of them stepping aside is great news. The guy in Corpus Christi, Texas I know it was citizens in the community that went after him and filed that petition against him and citizens defending freedom, great organization we do a lot with. They've gotten fantastic results and he's finally resigning as well. I guess the big question I don't know if you've looked close enough of the after effect Are there? I mean, these are definitely left wing counties, so what's the replacement, right? Like I'm assuming Soros will be right back in there with his money, or the family money, you know, and his son apparently just as bent on the leftist agenda. So will the same thing happen, right? Or do you think the people are waking up enough that we at least get a less bad DA? Can we put it that way?

Zack Smith: 16:17
Well, hopefully you get a less bad DA, at least initially. But you're absolutely right George Soros and other left-winging billionaires who are funding this movement they're not going anywhere. This is a national top-down movement that's being pushed across the country. My heritage foundation colleague and I we actually wrote an entire book on this phenomenon. It's called Rogue Prosecutors how Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America's Communities. You can find it on Amazon or Barnes, noble or wherever else books are sold. We hope your listeners will get a copy and learn more about the movement, because what happened is people don't understand, or haven't traditionally understood, the role that the district attorney plays, the fact that the district attorney is really the gatekeeper to the criminal justice system, and then they don't understand the policies many of these district attorneys are implementing. Because these DAs have been very quiet by a margin. They're first-ranked for office and use bland, full-cested language saying things like we want a fair justice system, we don't want anyone to be incarcerated unnecessarily, we want everyone to be treated equally under the law. Those are unobjectionable phrases that you or I or the average person on the street would agree with. But what happens? When these DAs get into office? It quickly becomes apparent that what they mean by those phrases and what you or I would understand. Those phrases to me are two very different, two very radically different things, completely.

Rick Green: 17:38
Yeah, I mean even when you say, when they say everyone should be treated equally under the law, that's the exact opposite of what they're actually doing, but, like you said, they know our language right. They know how to say the things that would identify with our values, even though they turn around and do the exact opposite. And I do think people are waking up, though, and, good or bad whatever, the indictments of Donald Trump, I think, have brought this to the forefront, where people are paying more attention. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people harmed in these cities all across the country that didn't have the name or the money or whatever to fight back, and so they weren't able to bring attention to it, but I know in the audience as I'm talking to, and even when we hear from our radio audience, people are very concerned about the two-tier justice system. What do we do long term on this? What do you guys recommend in the book and just as you travel the country to get people to realize the value of blind justice, equal justice in a good justice system? I don't think the nation gets arrived without a good justice system, so do you think people are waking up to that Right?

Zack Smith: 18:45
Well, look, you're absolutely right. Justice is one thing that shouldn't be a left or right issue. It should become one of the few areas where there's bipartisan consensus. We want everyone to be treated equally under the law, and so I think one of the best things we can do is doing exactly what we are right here talking about the issues, helping to educate people about the role of the DA. What policies are good criminal justice policies, what policies are bad criminal justice policies, what policies these rogue district attorneys are implementing? Because when I go around the country and I ask audiences do you think murder should be in jail? Everything goes up. Do you think rapist, robber should be in jail? Everything goes up. Do you think people should have to serve almost all of the prison term that the judge sentenced them to? Almost every end goes up. And so then walking them through that this isn't happening in many communities today, I think is a real eye for a lot of people, and so I think going out having these conversations is incredibly important. And then the other important thing is holding elected officials accountable to implement good common sense criminal justice policies, and by that I mean we know what works to combat violent crime rates, empowering police officers to do their jobs in a responsible manner, and in prosecuting criminals. We've seen that work in the past, and it's that type of dedication to those principles that will help us combat this rise in violent crime once again.

Rick Green: 20:09
Yeah, and Zack, I love the way you described all of that and it's a reminder. This is not an overnight, one election solution. This is education Just holding their feet to the fire. Price of freedom is eternal vigilance. And we just we got kind of spoiled, not kind of. We got a lot spoiled for a long time and had it so good and didn't have to do much to bear the burden. We just got to enjoy the blessings. And those days are over. Man, it's time to think about this thing long term, start doing the blocking and tackling the daily things it takes to preserve a republic, and thankfully you guys at Heritage continue to do a phenomenal job there. So tell Kevin and the whole team thank you, thank you, thank you. We appreciate y'all.

Zack Smith: 20:48
Well, I appreciate that. I really appreciate you having me on the show today and always happy to have a conversation about these very important issues.

Rick Green: 20:56
That's Zack Smith from Heritage Foundation. Stay with us folks. I'm David at Tim Barton.

Tim Barton: 21:09
Hi friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don't know much about American history, or even heroes of the faith, and I know often times for parents we're trying to find good content for our kids to read and if you remember, back to the Bible, at the Book of Hebrews, it has the Faith Hall of Fame where they outlined the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that, as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the Courageous Leaders Collection and this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright Brothers, and there's a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection you'll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it's a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at WallBuilders.com that's www.WallBuilders.com.

Rick Green: 22:12
We're back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us and thanks to Zack Smith and Heritage for all the good work that they're doing out there as well. David Tim, of course I didn't realize there was this many of them that have actually resigned or been defeated. I knew about the Corpus Christi guy because of our friends over at Citizens Defending Freedom who we work with. They've been the ones to push for that. I didn't even know until that happened that we had a mechanism in Texas law for citizens to actually file a complaint against a county official like that for not doing their job. So kudos to the folks there in Corpus Christi for getting rid of that. Soros funded DA. But man, this is yeah. Like you said, David, before the interview, this did turn out to be like a good news Friday.

David Barton: 22:50
Yeah, it is. It's just hard to imagine all the damage that has been done to so many business owners and so many individuals and others by these rogue guys. We're looking at crime numbers but you got to remember numbers also represent crimes that have been committed, and so what we're not getting from media is the personal stories behind this, the guys who lost their lives and some of these riots where the DAs wouldn't shut it down and wouldn't send the police and told the police to stand down, the loss of property, the loss of physical health I mean there's just so many more things that happen here. So this story actually goes a lot deeper than just changing elected officials, because elected officials pass policies and those policies always have consequence, either good or bad. That's why God got the children of Israel together after he gave them the law and had Moses say all right, this mount over here on one side is called Ebel and this mount over here on the other is called Gheorgem, and one's a cursed mountain, one's a blessed mountain. If you do what God said, you'll have a bless. If you don't do what God said, it's going to be cursed. And so every year they would remind people the blessings and cursings that came from following what God said, and this is the thing where that I cannot imagine a previous generation prior to World War II that would have bought into any concept of not punishing crime being a good thing in any way, shape, fashion or form. So in some ways we're coming back to common sense and, whether we know it or not, we're coming back to biblical positions and that's a really good place to be and hopefully people will keep focusing on that. And look at these down ballot races because again, when you're talking four or five, six percent turnout, I mean the mayor of Los Angeles who just left. They got a new mayor now, but he was elected with 2.9 percent of the vote and you have Anise Parker who is the mayor of Houston, who really turned that in the wrong direction and she was 3.3 percent of the vote. So these are the type of races that are a lot like school board races. If people would just turn out and vote at even five or eight or 10 percent, you can see massive changes all over the United States at these local races. So I encourage people to really not turn away from these local races. These down ballot races. Spend the time to see who's on there who's running, and in a lot of places they're going to be Soros, chosen kind of DA's, and that's not who you want.

Tim Barton: 25:10
And to that end. Sometimes you don't always know where George Soros is spending the money After the fact. Sometimes you can find out, but certainly you can find out where people stand on some pretty basic issues and where they are about punishing criminals and upholding a standard of justice and backing law enforcement. There's some common sense that could be applied and if there's people that are in favor of defunding the police, that don't want to support upholding a system of justice, they don't believe that justice is blind. If they think there should be a different tier of justice based on if someone's in a certain category, that's a Marxist ideology. It's not the American structure system and it's not going to work. We can ask some pretty basic questions and get a pretty good feel for the people we should be supporting in those positions Alright, folks, we're out of time for today.

Rick Green: 25:50
Glad that you were with us, hope you enjoyed the interview with Zack Smith and hope that you're going to take a lot of this and take action on it. I was talking at the top of the program about ways you can get involved, maybe hosting a Biblical Citizenship class or just studying or somehow some way building community. But we want to reiterate saturate yourself in God's word, build community and then tend the garden. Look for ways to tend the garden right there where you've been planted. God's given you a voice. Let it be heard. Get out there and be engaged. Go testify at a school board meeting or a legislative hearing, or maybe just go meet with your legislators. Look for ways that your voice can be heard in the community around you. Make sure you're listening to WallBuilders.