Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton, a George Soros-backed prosecutor, is facing an internal investigation over claims of a conflict of interest in a child sexual assault case that ended in a plea deal that outraged the victim’s legal team.
The victim’s attorney is also asking the state to conduct its own investigation.
Becton is married to Dr. Alvin Bernstine, a pastor at Bethlehem Mission Baptist Church of Richmond, California. A decade ago, Bernstine hired Jesse Armstrong to lead the youth choir at the church, though Armstrong was a registered sex offender. Armstrong is also Bernstine’s godson.
In March, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Armstrong pleaded guilty “to charges of lewd acts against a minor, unlawful intercourse with a minor and meeting with a minor for a lewd purpose” involving a 14-year-old girl in the choir.
Though he faced up to seven years in prison, Armstrong’s plea bargain cut his sentence to two years and eight months. The victim is suing the church and Bernstine, alleging that they should have known Armstrong’s history, and her lawyer has asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate.
This week, attorney Vince Finaldi sent a letter to Bonta asking him to investigate Becton’s apparent conflict of interest, the San Francisco Chronicle reported:
Vince Finaldi, a lawyer representing the unnamed victim, who is now an adult, said he was “alarmed” that District Attorney Diana Becton “did not formally recuse herself from this case given her close familial ties to the interested parties,” according to a May 4 letter he sent to State Attorney General Rob Bonta asking for an investigation into possible conflict of interest.
Finaldi said last month he was asking Bonta to probe the situation and on Wednesday his law firm provided The Chronicle with a copy of the letter he sent to the attorney general. Becton, responding to the allegations, said Thursday she will “initiate an independent internal investigation about how this case was handled and I will take the appropriate administrative action once that investigation is complete.”
She also said that her office prosecuted the case without her involvement.
As Breitbart News has reported, Becton received $50,000 from a political action committee funded by Soros, the left-wing billionaire who has upended criminal justice in America by supporting radical prosectors in prosecutors’ races nationwide.
Becton notoriously charged a couple with a “hate crime” for painting over the words “Black Lives Matter” in a temporary local mural. She also successfully prosecuted former Danville, California, police officer Andrew Hall for shooting and killing a suspect during a police chase. She faces re-election in June.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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