Hantler: George Soros Declares War on the State of Missouri

It wasn’t enough that, years ago, George Soros fanned the flames of anti-police protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Now he’s back to his old antics: bankrolling a prosecutor to go after a popular, conservative Republican Governor, Eric Greitens.

Soros’ Washington-DC based super PAC gave St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner almost $200,000 to make sure she carried his water once elected. And she has: She’s softened enforcement of crimes and, worse, has used the powers of her office to recklessly pursue an investigation against the Governor.

That investigation culminated in an indictment this past week—which means that Missouri taxpayers are, yet again, on the hook for spending taxpayer money for frivolous cases, thanks to George Soros.

Missouri isn’t the only place Soros’s tentacles reach. He’s tried to weaken crime laws and attack law enforcement in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Texas. By spending millions to fund soft-on-crime local prosecutors—including $2 million to unseat Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona—Soros hopes that his far-left ideology on crime and violence can take hold in prosecutors officers around the United States.

In St. Louis, Soros money is doing exactly what he hoped it would do: St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has proven a train wreck. Her staff has bungled easy-to-win cases. She’s bleeding prosecutors and has been mired in scandal. Worst of all: a judge in Missouri actually had to order her office to stand down on a police shooting case, when it turned out that she was both prosecuting the police officer and determining whether the case should go forward.

And the results are plain for all St. Louisians to see: crime is sky-high. St. Louis came in second last year for the most violent city in America—and the city hit a 21-year-high for homicides. Over 200 people were killed in St. Louis in 2017 because of homicide. And that was in a year in Chicago, Detroit, and New York all saw decreases in total homicides. (If you want to see just how bad things have gotten, take a look at the 10 most chilling St. Louis murder cases of 2017. All, of course, on Gardner’s watch.)

Any other Circuit Attorney would consider this a personal failure. They would redouble their efforts to pursue justice, go after criminals, and take the fight to gangs. But that doesn’t fit with the George Soros Open Society agenda, and so Kim Garnder has had to take a different tack: She’s gone after a popular sitting Republican Governor. The Governor had an affair, and she’s attempting to turn that personal mistake into a felony charge.

For weeks, Gardner’s been turning over one stone and the next—a lawyer in desperate search of a crime. She hired private investigators, instead of using the police, as is normally done in prosecutions. Why? Because she knew that the police would find precious little to support the indictment she wanted to bring. She’s looked into the Governor’s campaign, his staff’s use of cell phones, and much else—all of which has little to do with the affair. So after a reckless and hasty several week investigation, she’s now brought forward a case she’s almost certain to lose—and she’s subjected the taxpaying public to the worst kind of show trial.

When people wonder why George Soros and his money are a source of such deep concern, they need to look at cases like this and cities like St. Louis. Money talks: and in this case, George Soros’s money has empowered a prosecutor for whom going after political opponents is more important than dealing with crime in the streets. It’s an embarrassment to the Show-Me State, and conservatives around the country need to speak up.