Representatives for George Soros no longer want to be associated with disgraced prosecutor Chesa Boudin now that he's been rebuked by the liberal voters of San Francisco, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Hours after Boudin was recalled by double-digits on Tuesday, representatives for the liberal billionaire contacted the Free Beacon to reject its characterization of Boudin as a "George Soros darling." The Soros representatives from public relations firm BerlinRosen say he never contributed to Boudin, and that it is wrong to label Boudin a "Soros prosecutor."
"We disagree with any analysis that labels any prosecutor as a 'Soros prosecutor'—each candidate stands on their own," said the BerlinRosen representative. "Justice & Public Safety PAC, the political action committee through which Mr. Soros supports prosecutor candidates, has not supported—in the past or in the present, directly or indirectly—Boudin."
The Soros effort to distance the billionaire from Boudin came just hours after San Francisco voted the liberal prosecutor out of office. The recall election received nationwide attention and was viewed as a political rejection of radical criminal justice reform policies. Boudin's short tenure in San Francisco coincided with a spike in violent crime, as well as homelessness, public defecation, and looting.
The Free Beacon has characterized Boudin as a "Soros prosecutor" in the past and never received a correction request from the billionaire's representatives. This is likely because, while it is true that Soros has never directly contributed to his campaigns, Boudin is one of Soros's favorite prosecutors. The Soros-funded group Fair and Just Prosecution, for example, has Boudin featured in its "meet the movement" section.
Soros additionally funds a network of liberal organizations that raised Boudin more than $600,000 for his election, according to the Washington Times, and contributed directly to groups fighting to oppose his recall.
Smart Justice California Action Fund donated almost $180,000 to oppose Boudin's recall. The group received funding from the California Justice & Public Safety PAC, which was stood up in 2018 thanks to $3.65 million from Soros.
Fair and Just Prosecution, the group that features Boudin as a face of its movement, is funded by the Tides Center, which received more than $30 million from Soros's Open Society Foundation between 2016 and 2020. The liberal justice reform group has hosted conferences that feature its favored prosecutors. Boudin attended one of those conferences in December and stood shoulder to shoulder for a group picture with district attorneys that have received direct funding from Soros, including Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner and Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon.
The Soros representatives contended that having ties to his massive network of political organizations doesn't mean a prosecutor is affiliated with the Democratic megadonor.
"Our disagreement is particularly strong when the [Soros prosecutor] label is applied to an elected official who participates in an event or an organization that has a second or third degree association with Mr. Soros," said representative Alex Navarro-McKay. "Candidate X joins Org A which gets funding from Org B which gets from Donor C? Bluntly, it's a ridiculous contortion."
Soros has developed a political network that is designed to hide direct connections between groups and donors. He is a founding member of the Democracy Alliance, which uses secret meetings to direct funding from its millionaire and billionaire members to a select number of organizations selected by leadership. All of the donations, however, are made by individual members rather than the Democracy Alliance as a whole, which hides the sum of money being directed.
The BerlinRosen representatives declined to provide further comment on Soros's opinion of Boudin.