Soros-Backed Virginia Prosecutors Face Recall Amid Crime Surge

Virginians for Safe Communities launch effort to put ‘pro-criminal prosecutors on trial’

Collin Anderson • August 2, 2021 4:50 pm

As homicides rise in Virginia’s northern suburbs, voters will have the opportunity to put three liberal prosecutors backed by billionaire Democratic megadonor George Soros on trial.

A new Virginia nonprofit, Virginians for Safe Communities, is launching a campaign to recall Fairfax County’s Steve Descano, Loudoun County’s Buta Biberaj, and Arlington County’s Parisa Dehghani-Tafti from their respective offices, the group announced in a Monday statement. The progressive attorneys took office in January 2020 after Soros spent more than $2 million supporting their campaigns. All three have since implemented lenient law enforcement policies, decisions that have coincided with a rise in crime.

Descano, for example, said in December that his office will stop seeking cash bail, which he called “unjust” and “racially biased.” In the months following the decision, homicides in Fairfax County more than doubled the total seen during the same time period in 2020. In Dehghani-Tafti’s Arlington, meanwhile, felony aggravated assaults rose 40 percent last year. And in Loudoun, Biberaj has faced criticism for dismissing hundreds of domestic violence cases.

“These rogue prosecutors’ dangerous policies are costing lives, re-victimizing victims, and undermining the public’s faith in our justice system—it ends now,” Virginians for Safe Communities president Sean Kennedy said.

Descano, Biberaj, and Dehghani-Tafti did not return requests for comment.

In order to trigger a recall trial, the group must obtain petition signatures from registered voters in the officeholder’s jurisdiction “equal to ten percent of the total number of votes cast” in the last election for the official being recalled. Roughly 300,000 people voted in Descano’s 2019 race, meaning organizers must obtain approximately 30,000 signatures to initiate a trial.

Should Virginians for Safe Communities secure enough signatures, the prosecutors would undergo a trial by jury to determine removal from office. The decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Descano, Biberaj, and Dehghani-Tafti are far from the only Soros-backed prosecutors enacting liberal policies across the country. The billionaire has also spent millions of dollars to elect the likes of Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, St. Louis’s Kim Gardner, and Chicago’s Kim Foxx, who dropped charges against Jussie Smollett after the actor staged a hate crime. Homicides have surged in all three cities in recent months.

While Soros in May funneled $1 million to a group working to defund police, a spike in carjackings in Arlington County’s Crystal City neighborhood declined dramatically after local police expanded their patrolling efforts.