The Virginia man arrested on Monday for assaulting a Democratic congressman's staff with an aluminum bat was arrested just last year for attacking two police officers, but he was put back on the streets by a George Soros-backed prosecutor after he completed a mental health treatment program.
Fairfax City Police on Monday arrested 49-year-old Xuan Kha Tran Pham after he attacked two of Rep. Gerry Connolly's (D., Va.) staffers with a baseball bat. Pham was already on law enforcement's radar—in January 2022, he attacked two local police officers, stealing at least one officer's stun gun in the process. Fairfax County commonwealth's attorney Steve Descano (D.) dropped all charges against Pham, which included resisting arrest and assault on law enforcement, after determining the man had satisfactorily completed an alternative to detention treatment program.
"The original incident stemmed from a mental health crisis and charges were [dropped] as part of an agreement that ensured the defendant was receiving mental health services and complying with treatment," Descano told ABC7.
Descano's handling of Pham’s arrest follows a string of controversial decisions from the commonwealth's attorney's office. In 2020, Descano significantly reduced charges against a man arrested for abduction, who went on to murder two homeless men in two East Coast cities. The murderer would have been in prison at the time of his high-profile attacks if not for Descano, who took office in 2020 thanks in part to a six-figure donation from Soros's Justice and Public Safety PAC.
The Soros PAC, which seeks to elect individuals who will give more lenient sentences to criminals, made similarly hefty donations to Loudoun County commonwealth's attorney Buta Biberaj (D.) and Arlington County commonwealth's attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (D.). The three left-wing Virginia prosecutors have come under fire for pushing soft-on-crime policies and lenient sentencing guidelines amid a nationwide spike in homicides and other offenses.
Pham was charged with one count of aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding for his attack on Connolly's staffers, one of whom was an intern on her first day on the job. Pham was also arrested on hate crime charges for allegedly attacking a white woman with a bat earlier the same day.
Monday's attack comes just weeks after a man attempted to murder a Republican Senate staffer with a knife on the streets of Washington, D.C. Court records show that Glynn P. Neal had been released from prison just one day before he stabbed a senior staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) in broad daylight. Neal, who was arrested in 2011 for pimping and threatening to murder his girlfriend and her friend, had been given a reduced 12-year sentence with 5 years of supervised release.