There is an old saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Typically, when we hear or use that expression, it is meant as a compliment. 

But depending on the circumstances, that may or may not be a compliment. The full expression, often attributed to Oscar Wilde, is: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”   

In other words, a copycat is not to be applauded but rather seen as someone who has nothing original or unique to offer. 

So, when we say that Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Jose Garza’s policies remind us of those implemented by former Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, it is decidedly not meant to be a compliment. Garza’s policies, each of which is pro-criminal, anti-victim, and unsupportive of law enforcement, are eerily similar to those of Gascon, and in some cases, carbon copies. 

Gascon’s policies resulted in a massive spike in crime in the City of Angels during his tenure in office. Last year, the voters of Los Angeles finally connected the dots between high crime rates and Gascon’s policies, voted him out of office, and installed a law-and-order district attorney. 

In this article, we provide a side-by-side comparison of Garza’s policies with Gascon’s policies, analyze the crime trends in both cities under both men, and conclude that Garza is essentially Gascon 2.0. 

Before diving into Garza’s policies, it helps to step back and briefly remind everyone of the origin, beliefs, and playbook of the “progressive prosecutor” movement, and the man who bankrolled this failed social experiment.     

In 1969, George Soros opened his first hedge fund, and in 1973, he opened his second. Following a number of bullish and bearish moves over the next decade, he made his debut as a billionaire philanthropist by establishing an organization called Open Society Foundations in 1984.

According to the Open Society Foundations website, Soros has given away over $32 billion to the Foundations. 

One of us (Cully Stimson) wrote in a book on the Soros-funded rogue prosecutor movement. In the book’s second chapter, it was noted that as of June 2022, Soros had spent more than $40 million on direct campaign spending to elect local district attorneys.  

Soros himself took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal in July 2022 and penned an op-ed on why he financially supports progressive prosecutors. He acknowledged that he has been involved “in efforts to reform the criminal justice system for more than 30 years.” 

According to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, an organization that tracks Soros spending on local district attorney races, to date, Soros or Soros-affiliated organizations have spent more than $50 million in direct campaign spending, and up to $1 billion in indirect campaign spending such as “media relations, sponsored academic or think tank papers, lobbying campaigns, and grassroots organizing.” 

The movement began around 2015, when people advising Soros convinced him that the entire criminal justice system was racist, and that the only way to “reform” the system was to reverse engineer and dismantle the system from the inside out. Their modus operandi was to recruit and fund criminal defense-oriented attorneys to run for the office of the county district attorney. Once elected, they would implement sweeping pro-criminal, anti-victim policies, and target police officers for alleged misconduct. 

Kim Foxx, the former Cook County (Chicago) State’s Attorney, was the first Soros-backed rogue prosecutor. She was elected to office in early 2017 with the help of $400,000 from the Soros-funded Illinois Safety and Justice PAC, and $300,000 from the Civic Participation Action Fund. 

Other household names followed, such as Larry Krasner (Philadelphia), Kim Gardner (St. Louis), Marilyn Mosby (Baltimore), George Gascon (Los Angeles), Chesa Boudin (San Francisco), and Rachael Rollins (Boston), and many other less infamous prosecutors. Of those listed above, only Krasner has survived in office, the rest leaving their offices in disgrace.

Each rogue prosecutor enacts a similar version of the Soros playbook by issuing new policy directives to all prosecutors in his/her office. They include:

The animating force behind the rogue prosecutor movement is the prison abolition movement. Angela Davis, one of the most prominent leaders of the movement, has advocated for abolishing all prisons. In her bestselling book “Are Prisons Obsolete?”, Davis wrote that “prisons are racist institutions,” which have become “a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited.” 

Davis believes we have a “racist and class-based justice system” and that large numbers of people are in prison “simply because they are, for example, black, Chicano, Vietnamese, Native American or poor.” 

To Davis and those inspired by her warped notion of the criminal justice system, sending a criminal, especially a minority,........

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