[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
Leftists pushing their progressive soft-on-crime agenda consider America’s criminal system to be “systemically racist.” Leftists not only make excuses for even the vilest of criminals if these individuals fit into one or more of the so-called “oppressed” identity groups. They help develop and implement dangerous policies that protect these criminals from prosecution to the fullest extent of the law. Leftwing activists accomplish this by advancing the candidacies of progressive prosecutors in major cities and then shaping their priorities and strategies once they are in office.
Leftwing megadonors like George Soros have bankrolled progressive district attorney campaigns with some notable successes. A partial list includes Bexar County (San Antonio) Texas Chief Prosecutor Joe Gonzales; Fairfax County Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano; former Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon District Attorney, Mike Schmidt; and Hennepin County Attorney (Minneapolis, Minnesota) Mary Moriarty.
Once elected, these progressive district attorneys, and others bankrolled by leftwing megadonors, have followed to a tee the roadmap of the soft-on-crime policies, practices, and talking points they receive from leftwing activist organizations. Foundations and other groups backed by the likes of George Soros have funded these activist groups. This is how the Left seeks to radically transform America’s criminal justice system piece by piece, metastasizing the cancer of pro-criminal policies such as cashless bail, releasing recidivist violent criminals, and lax alternatives to incarceration across the country.
One of the leftwing activist organizations pulling the strings behind the scenes is the Wren Collective. According to a recent report published by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF), entitled “Outsourcing Justice,” the Wren Collective “exerts undue influence on the criminal justice policies” of many of these district attorneys. The Wren Collective “[a]ccepts taxpayer-funded sole-source contracts after previously offering ‘free’ services,’” which in turn are funded by megadonors.
The Wren Collective has leveraged its relationships in the leftwing, progressive universe to keep its target prosecutors in line. It “could only make policy for dozens of progressive prosecutors’ offices and nearly 50 million Americans,” the LELDF report stated, “if those district attorneys understood the group’s help was strongly suggested by their shared political donors and allies.” As a result, “on issue after issue, Wren’s policy prescriptions were adopted almost entirely and often verbatim by elected district attorneys.”
LELDF policy director Sean Kennedy, who led the group’s research into the Wren Collective, described the insidious interconnections. “Progressive prosecutors are not part of some organic movement,” he said. “They are simply the face of a carefully designed and highly coordinated campaign to undermine the American criminal justice system from within. Our research shows that donors fund the production, activists write the script, the Wren Collective directs the scene, and their client prosecutors dutifully act out their parts.”
The LELDF based its report “on public information requests (totaling over 50,000 pages of emails and text messages), campaign finance filings, and tax documents,” revealing disturbing links between progressive prosecutors and the leftwing Wren Collective. These tight relationships have resulted in the Wren Collective’s “controlling messaging, writing policies on everything from bail to police involved shootings, and even interfering in homicide and police misconduct cases.”
For example, according to the LELDF report, the “Wren Collective was in regular communication with San Antonio’s prosecutor [Joe Gonzales] and his senior staff.” Thousands of texts and hundreds of emails were exchanged among Mr. Gonzales, his chief deputy, Christian Hendricksen, and Jessica Brand, Wren Collective’s executive director. The Wren Collective, among other things, “wrote legal briefs and appeals, steered media coverage (i.e., providing press releases, op-eds, and talking points), developed and implemented prosecutorial policies, and pushed for charges in a police shooting and to drop the death penalty in another case.”
Ms. Brand also promised to work with Gonzales and Hendricksen to “mobilize massive community action” for the purpose of pressuring judges who did not like Brand’s bail reform proposals to change their minds.
Fairfax County Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Descano’s communications director reached out to the Wren Collective for support. As a result, LELDF noted, “Descano and his senior leadership team joined Wren to sketch out a policy and communications strategy for the progressive prosecutor’s second term.”
Former Portland, Oregon District Attorney Mike Schmidt was in office during the 2020 riots in Portland. His close ties with the Wren Collective led him to “adopt a Wren-authored policy to not prosecute left-wing rioters in that city despite widespread violence and vandalism,” according to the LELDF report. The Wren Collective also wrote sentencing guidelines for the Portland DA office.
The Wren Collective’s senior attorney Amy Weber told Mr. Schmidt during a telephone conversation that the Wren Collective was “just here to help you figure out how to implement meaningful changes to the criminal justice system in Portland.” Schmidt instructed his staff to satisfy the Wren Collective’s need for internal data to “to help me craft some policies.”
Hennepin County Attorney Moriarty supports progressive “restorative justice programs” and “alternatives to incarceration,” and has used taxpayers’ money to pay the Wren Collective for its communications services to help spread her messages of concern for the criminals’ welfare.
In one instance, Ms. Moriarty sought help from the Wren Collective to communicate her disdain for the Laken Riley Act. This commonsense law, passed early in President Trump’s second term, was named in honor of a Georgia nursing student who was brutally murdered by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant previously allowed into the U.S. by the Biden administration. It mandates the federal detention of illegal immigrants accused of theft, burglary, assaulting a law enforcement officer, and any crime that causes death or serious bodily injury.
In the message that the Wren Collective helped craft for Moriarty, the progressive prosecutor said that the Laken Riley Act “preys on a popular lie, that noncitizens are drivers of crime in their communities.” She accused politicians of “weaponizing” Ms. Riley’s 2024 kidnapping and murder to score political points.
This claptrap is mirrored by the unfounded assertion by Jessica Brand (pictured above), the Wren Collective’s executive director, that Trump administration officials “exploit a few high-profile crimes committed by undocumented people.”
Exploit a few high-profile crimes? Tell that to the multiple victims of crimes committed by violent illegal immigrants roaming the streets of communities across the U.S. or to their survivors. Besides, even one murder committed by an illegal immigrant is one too many. Laken Riley would be alive today if her illegal immigrant killer had not been allowed into the country and remain free in the first place.
The well-funded Wren Collective is embedded in the operations of well-funded progressive local prosecutors, demonstrating the Left’s coordinated strategy to turn America’s criminal justice system into a protection system for criminals. The prosecutors are encouraged to increase prosecutions of police officers while dropping or reducing charges against hardened criminals. Public safety is being sacrificed at the altar of social justice “reform.”
