Free Republic

Prosecutors at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office are being accused of withholding evidence in hopes of convicting a San Francisco police officer of excessive force. The NBC Bay Area's Investigative Unit has learned a criminal investigator for the DA’s office, Magen Hayashi, testified Thursday that she was ordered by her own co-workers – attorneys inside the district attorney’s office – to withhold evidence, and said she believed she would have been fired if she refused. District Attorney Chesa Boudin and his office did not respond to requests for comment. The allegations stem from the ongoing criminal case against San...

So long as crime remained in San Francisco’s low-income, historically black Tenderloin neighborhood, it was acceptable to San Fran’s far-left ruling elites, but when it erupted in the high-end stores the elites frequent, “the reign of criminals” had “to end.” The reaction to the looting of Louis Vuitton on Union Square reveals San Fran’s liberal elites are “Fair Weather Marxists” and hypocrites. As we know from their contributions to liberal candidates’ campaign coffers and support for socialism, San Fran’s elites have an affinity for Marxist revolution, but apparently only for revolutionaries who rob, rape, maim, and kill each other in...

The crime wave sweeping across the country is the direct result of a years-long campaign by George Soros to bankroll the election of far-left district attorneys committed to undermining law and order. Over the past six years or so, Soros has poured tens of millions of dollars into the campaigns of DA candidates... ... Soros can circumvent individual contribution limits by funneling money through the PACs he has set up for this purpose, which generally go by the ironic name of “Safety and Justice.” ... Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner received $1,700,000 from Soros. Chicago DA Kim Foxx, who treated Jussie...

[...] “We're going to be making some changes to Union Square and how cars are able to access,” [SF Mayor London Breed] told reporters after the burglaries. “There will be limited access in terms of when you come to this area.” [...] It seems as though the Union Square police takeover is a test balloon for an ostensibly liberal city fully ceding to capital and conservative talking points — the natural result of months and months of fear mongering about Business Owner Rights and crime and especially bogeyman District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who’s facing a recall effort. Contrary to the...

There's nothing like a smarmy, smug, leftist who's realized he's cooked his own goose. Which brings us to the case of Chesa Boudin, the district attorney of San Francisco who's effectively legalized shoplifting in the name of "criminal justice reform." He's prompted massive store closures with ugly videos of broad daylight robberies on large and small stores. Boudin's refusal to prosecute has turned San Francisco into another socialist crime-pit, Caracas. And now, like his mentor Hugo Chavez, he's facing a voter recall. Which seems to be concentrating his mind given that he's suddenly changing his tune -- and comically enough,...

SAN FRANCISCO — Elections officials announced Tuesday that a recall election against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin will appear on the ballot in June, giving residents of the politically liberal city a chance to keep or oust a polarizing figure and former public defender who has been a prosecutor for less than two years. Critics say Boudin, 41, has failed to prosecute repeat offenders, allowing them to commit more crimes that have contributed to the deterioration of the city's quality of life. His supporters say his progressive policies of ending mass incarceration and promoting restorative justice are what San...

A second recall effort launched against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin demonstrates how residents are "fed up" with his progressive policies, as his push to reduce jail funding and refusal to prosecute repeat offenders ensures the streets remain marred with open-air drug dealing and violent crime now stretching into the suburbs, a leader of the prominent local police union tells Fox News. Last week, the first Republican-backed recall effort fell just 1,714 signatures short of the 51,325 required to trigger a special election to bring the question of ousting Boudin before voters. Now a second recall effort is being...

Disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo used his last hours in office Monday to grant clemency to several convicts, including a former member of the Weather Underground who is the father of San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin. Cuomo granted clemency to David Gilbert, 75, for his role in what became known as the “Brink’s heist,” an effort to steal millions of dollars to fund the activities of radical left-wing organizations. David Gilbert is serving a 75-years-to-life sentence for his role in the crime as a member of the Weather Underground, which stole $1.6 million in cash from the armored...

Before his election in 2019, Chesa Boudin worked as a translator for communist dictator Hugo Chávez CBS parent company Viacom's stock has plummeted more than 50 percent in the past week, perhaps due to the underwhelming quality of its journalism. Earlier this week, the company's paid streaming service, Paramount+, aired a special 60 Minutes segment on Chesa Boudin, the radical left-wing district attorney of crime-ravaged San Francisco. Wesley Lowery, the former Washington Post employee best known for spending several minutes in jail after getting arrested in a McDonald's, conducted the interviews for the piece. The controversial journalist was part of...

David Gilbert went to prison a revolutionary, raising his fist and scorning authorities who prosecuted him for an infamous 1981 armored truck robbery in which a guard and two police officers were killed. Four decades later, advocates for the 76-year-old inmate’s release include San Francisco’s chief prosecutor, the son left behind at 14 months old when both his parents were arrested. “As long as I can remember, I’ve known that the most likely scenario is that my father is going to die in prison,” said Chesa Boudin, sworn in as district attorney last year. Boudin ran a progressive campaign in...

Political atheism is spreading across California, and cynicism is taking hold. Reviling policymakers is not new, of course, but the current disdain is particularly intense. As elected officials’ disregard for constituents and the law becomes ever more evident, all but the most stalwart loyalists are turning against them. Mistrust is worsened by Covid restrictions “for thee, but not for me.” In September, the unmasked Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, visited a San Francisco hair salon closed under strict emergency pandemic orders. Business owners had been forced to cease operations and the public was restricted from getting haircuts, but Pelosi...

ALBANY — When Chesa Boudin was growing up, both his parents were serving long sentences in New York state prisons for their roles in a 1981 armored Brink’s truck robbery in Rockland County that left two Nyack police officers and a security guard dead. Family friend Jeff Jones brought the youngster on prison visits to see his father. Boudin was raised by adoptive parents and the boy left each prison encounter struggling to process feelings of sadness, anger and confusion over his powerlessness to change a criminal justice system that broke his family apart. “I had a lot of emotional...

It seems there is suddenly a movement in media to silence anyone who speaks out against George Soros—and, specifically, his funding of radical prosecutors seeking to change the criminal justice system by simply ignoring certain crimes. This happened to me personally this week while I was being interviewed on Fox’s Outnumbered. When I brought up Soros’s plan to get pro-criminal, anti-police prosecutors elected across the country, two of the show’s participants interrupted me and forcefully asserted that Soros was not involved. ... Soros’s plan to elect these prosecutors has been well documented ... There are plenty of specific examples of...

San Francisco, Calif. -- District attorney Chesa Boudin acknowledges that the Tenderloin District of the city is plagued by drug sellers from Honduras, but frets that arresting them isn't really worth it. Boudin, a former public defender who vowed as a candidate to prosecute fewer criminals, is not inclined to address how the surge in drug sales during Covid lockdowns was affecting city residents, and instead focused on the plight of the drug dealers themselves. Many were trafficked and their families were at risk at home if they cooperated with authorities, Boudin said in a webinar last week. Therefore, authorities...

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin believes his father, convicted murderer and former Weather Underground member David Gilbert, should be released from prison due to the coronavirus pandemic. Gilbert and Boudin’s mother, Kathy Boudin, were convicted of murder in 1983 for serving as getaway drivers during a bank robbery that left three people dead at the hands of their co-conspirators.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is dropping charges against one of the two suspects arrested in connection to a shocking viral video that shows an Asian man being robbed.

Newly-installed San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has dropped charges against a man whom police officers shot several times last month after he allegedly struck one of them with a glass vodka bottle, ran away, then attacked again. Rank-and-file officers are reportedly furious, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Boudin, as Breitbart News and others have reported, is the son of two activists in the Weather Underground, which the FBI calls a domestic terrorist organization, who were getaway drivers in a 1981 armored car heist that led to the deaths of two police officers and a guard, the UK Guardian...

One of Chesa Boudin’s first planned policy changes when he takes over as San Francisco’s district attorney next month seeks to answer a question that has long ignited debates in the city: Should people accused of crimes face harsher punishments if their actions allegedly benefited a street gang? The former public defender, who takes office Jan. 8, promises to put an end to filing what are known as gang enhancements against defendants — charges that can add years to felony sentences. Gang enhancements have drawn increased opposition in California, driven by statistics showing that they are disproportionately applied to people...

I’ll leave it to others to debate the merits of San Francisco’s new district attorney Chesa Boudin, who (according to this San Franciso Examiner article) won election in the face of “intense opposition” from the city’s police union and political establishment and who has plans “to immediately begin reforming the criminal justice system.” I am very surprised, though, to learn that Justice Sotomayor somehow saw fit to send Boudin a video of ardent congratulations at his swearing-in yesterday. In her video, Sotomayor tells Boudin that she is sending “this message to tell you how much I admire you” and that...

San Francisco elects a D.A. [Chesa Boudin] rooted in the Weather Underground. On October 20, 1981, the guys and gals of the Weather Underground finally did it. They at last carried out a criminal act that not only led directly to deaths but also landed at least some of them in prison. Unlike Bill Ayers, one of several Weather Underground fugitives fleeing the FBI who would later boast, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird! America is a great country!,” the orchestrators of this incident didn’t get away with it. This time, the plotters, including Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert,...