Newly elected Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is kicking off a campaign Thursday to elect tough-on-crime prosecutors, claiming that too many liberals holding the job fight for criminals instead of victims.
Teaming with the local-focused GOP group GOPAC, Miyares said he will lead the new Protecting Americans Action Fund in a national effort to promote and elect district attorneys in counties around the nation.
“The victims’ voices are being lost by these progressive prosecutors. They view themselves more as defense attorneys than prosecutors,” Miyares told Secrets.
As a result, he added, “These victims are being marginalized and ignored, and it’s leading to tragic consequences.”
Miyares, who ran on a “law and order” platform against a sitting liberal Virginia attorney general who focused more on social issues such as LGBT rights, cited several examples of how soft-on-crime local prosecutors helped criminals avoid jail or get skimpy sentences only to go out and commit more crimes.
“A lot of these same policies, these immediate criminal-first, victim-last policies, were tried in the 1970s, which led to disastrous results, disastrous levels of violent crime. And we’ve seen a replay of that, in some ways is only accelerated,” he said in the interview.
Eliminating criminal justice is not criminal justice reform.
Honored to serve as Chairman of Protecting Americans Action Fund, a new group standing up to left wing liberal prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law & prioritize public safety.https://t.co/IlkMvkaslg
— Jason Miyares (@JasonMiyaresVA) March 24, 2022
He added, “I have no doubt that part of the reason why Gov. [Glenn] Youngkin and myself were elected was the fact that the murder rate in Virginia was the highest it had been in over two decades.”
The group’s webpage, EnforceTheLaw.us, includes stories about victims of liberal prosecutors. It also notes that among the group’s political targets will be local prosecutors whose campaigns were supported by leftist megadonor George Soros.
“The Protecting Americans Project will serve as a new firewall to stop the advancement of progressive ‘reform prosecutors,’” it said.
Miyares said that he already has some target campaigns to begin funding.
The campaign comes as Republican groups and police have begun to target liberal city and state prosecutors and attorneys general who are turning a blind eye to rising crime in their bid for “social justice” and blaming crime on discrimination, racism, and other problems.
“When you hear of social justice, and it’s really distorted justice, it’s not justice for the victims,” said Miyares.
“I think one of the big problems we have in government are individuals who just think good intentions mean good results. And these far-left prosecutors, they may mean well, they may have good intentions, but the results have been disastrous. And what’s so tragic is that the victims of so many of these violent crimes are the poor, those in marginalized communities,” he said.
