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Posted on 09/15/2025 9:53:34 AM PDT by Twotone
A shadowy for-profit company and its nonprofit counterpart provide free services to at least 40 far-left prosecutor offices, raising questions about whether it’s working on behalf of taxpayers or of donors who have essentially bought government.
The Wren Collective is a shadowy group that emerged from a Cold War-era initiative aimed at promoting Soviet films in the United States. Its current iteration — funded by a former Enron executive and host of other leftist megadonors — claims that America’s “system of policing and mass incarceration is deeply flawed and intractably racist.”
The group has intervened on specific criminal cases, written policies that the district attorneys implement — such as eliminating cash bail — and strategized with at least one district attorney to mobilize activists to pressure judges who stood in the way.
That’s according to new research from the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, which used public records laws to secure tens of thousands of communications between leftist prosecutors and Wren.
Emails suggest that the collective gets funding from donors contingent on government offices agreeing to do the group’s bidding, even demanding proof that an office is following Wren’s recommendations in order to satisfy donors. Those same donors often bankrolled the district attorney’s election campaign.
“Once in office, these donor-activist groups leverage their political relationships with prosecutors to embed The Wren Collective in their offices as the DAs’ lead policy and communications advisors,” the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund said.
“The Wren Collective, a single obscure consulting group, could only make policy for dozens of progressive prosecutors’ offices and nearly 50 million Americans if those district attorneys understood the group’s help was strongly suggested by their shared political donors and allies,” it added. “Wren’s fiduciary duty and client loyalty remained with their political and nonprofit donors — the same donors who got them ‘hired’ as unpaid policy and communications consultants to the elected prosecutors.”
One donor is David Menschel, a Portland activist who has funded the campaigns of radical DAs across the country. Menschel was a top donor to Portland DA Mike Schmidt in 2020. After he won the election, Menschel connected Schmidt with Jessica Brand, a former public defender who runs the Wren Collective.
Wren employee Amy Weber wrote to Schmidt: “We do this work without any billing or publicity. These policies will be yours.” It soon became apparent that Menschel would be funding Wren for its quasi-governmental work – with conditions. “I spoke to Dave, and all he needs is for us to give him a final scope of work,” Weber wrote.
Another donor is oil heiress Stacy Schusterman. Schusterman donated $1.8 million to PACs supporting the election of José Garza in Austin, Texas. Brand then had Garza’s office speak directly with their shared funder about the work that Brand’s group could do inside government.
Wren stands at the ready anytime soft-on-crime policies create a mess for prosecutors. When Loudoun County, Virginia’s prosecutor, Buta Biberaj, personally tried to jail the father of a girl who was raped by a “genderfluid” boy in the school bathroom — while the boy went on to sexually assault a second girl — Wren asked whether “you would like some communications support.” Wren went on to form a relationship with Biberaj’s office that included drafting “diversion” policies, which involved even lighter penalties for crime.
George Soros has reshaped law enforcement in the United States by injecting huge sums of money into previously sleepy elections, with far-left candidates sometimes outspending their rivals tenfold, and still squeaking out only the narrowest victories. The strategy involves the idea that influence groups don’t have to convince legislatures to change laws if they can place prosecutors who will simply decline to enforce them.
But this new breed of candidate has often never worked as a prosecutor, instead coming from activism circles that defend the rights of criminals. Once they’re in office, that support never goes away, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund report found.
“The node of this donor-backed prosecutor influence operation is The Wren Collective LLC,” it wrote. “The substance of those policies – abolishing bail and releasing dangerous offenders, declining to prosecute narcotics, shoplifting, prostitution, and rioting while increasing prosecutions of law enforcement officers – have had serious consequences for public safety.”
In San Antonio, Texas, the Wren Collective “developed and implemented prosecutorial policies” for DA Joe Gonzales, all without a public contract. Brand was Gonzales’s “shadow communications director and senior advisor–despite other holding those roles on the public payroll,” the report said.
Even as the group secretly worked for the DA, Brand presented herself to the media as an independent expert who sought to deflect blame from Gonzales when crime rose. When the police chief complained of an increase in homicides because criminals saw few consequences, Brand orchestrated a seemingly organic “op-ed from a community advocate” in response.
Text messages show that in March 2020, Brand told the San Antonio DA’s office to drop a death penalty case, and offered to use a political action committee to pressure judges. “You could settle that death penalty case right now and no one would bat an eye,” she wrote. “Are the judges being any better? Or would it be helpful if some real justice pac volunteers started calling?”
In 2022, when a police officer non-fatally shot a suspect who hit him with a car, Wren pushed to drop charges against the suspect and indict the officer instead. “We got an indictment on the officer,” Gonzales’ deputy texted Brand. “Thanks for the help.” Brand’s group even told Gonzales what to say about it, with the deputy reassuring her that he “stuck to the talking points.”
When Gonzales faced a recall, Brand connected him with lawyers to fight it. Gonzales replied, “This was sent to my work email, and I do not always check my work emails as often as I do my personal.” He told her to communicate with him on his personal email “because my secretarial staff can see my emails.”
The group wrote policies eliminating cash bail that were adopted by prosecutors in Virginia, Texas, and Florida; a policy that resulted in Portland not charging left-wing rioters; and a “Sex Work Policy” to “mitigate the many harms and abuses plaguing sex workers, who often also struggle with poverty, discrimination, and marginalization, by declining to prosecute.” It held weekly calls with since-recalled San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin.
Yet the Wren Collective is shrouded in secrecy. The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund said many prosecutors refused to turn over communications with the group under public records laws, with some demanding up to $14,000 and others producing responses that omitted communications that the law enforcement group knew existed.
Wren’s nonprofit arm is structured as a “fiscally sponsored project” of a larger nonprofit: the shell of a group dedicated to pushing Soviet films in the United States before the fall of the Communist bloc. That intermediary serves as a black box, preventing its donors and its staff salaries from being directly disclosed. But the larger group, once known as the American-Soviet Film Initiative, has reported millions in funding from the foundations of Schusterman, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg’s wife, Priscilla, and Cari Tuna, the wife of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
Another major funder is Arnold Ventures, the charity of former Enron executive John Arnold. Arnold Ventures’ former COO now works for Wren.
Yet records show that even as billionaires wrote checks so the nonprofit could provide shadow government workers free of charge, which the Wren Collective used to gain easy access to offices, Brand would sometimes later ask DAs to pay an identically-named for-profit firm. One contract obtained by the law enforcement group showed that the money — $15,000 a month from the office of Los Angeles DA George Gascon — went to Wren Collective, LLC. The contract was awarded without competition.
Wren may have pulled the same bait-and-switch on Minneapolis prosecutor Mary Moriarty. In May, the Department of Justice said it was investigating Moriarty for civil rights violations after saying that charging decisions would take into account a suspect’s “racial identity”. The following month, Moriarty asked the Board of Supervisors for approval to pay Wren $150,000 to counteract “misinformation.”
Brand did not respond to The Daily Wire’s questions about the difference between the nonprofit and for-profit groups, how much she was paid, which prosecutors she had worked for, who funded the nonprofit, and whether providing donor-funded services to government offices posed ethical concerns.
The group works hand-in-hand with a second group that steers Soros prosecutors after their election, Fair and Just Prosecution. FJP’s founding executive director, Miriam Krinsky, resigned last year, the day that The Daily Wire published documents showing her staff accused her of racism and said she hypocritically called the police on them. She was replaced by Aramis Ayala, a black former Orlando prosecutor who is married to a member of the Wren Collective’s board.
Ayala was replaced as Orlando prosecutor by Monique Worrell, who gave confidential files to Wren so that the group could write a memo justifying not charging a teen with murder. The suspect was found in possession of a machine gun months later and sent to prison by federal prosecutors.
If you would like more information about what’s happening in Oregon, please FReepmail me. Please send me your name by FReepmail if you want to be on this list.
WREN is a new name for me
excerpt:
Wren stands at the ready anytime soft-on-crime policies create a mess for prosecutors. When Loudoun County, Virginia’s prosecutor, Buta Biberaj, personally tried to jail the father of a girl who was raped by a “genderfluid” boy in the school bathroom — while the boy went on to sexually assault a second girl — Wren asked whether “you would like some communications support.” Wren went on to form a relationship with Biberaj’s office that included drafting “diversion” policies, which involved even lighter penalties for crime.
George Soros has reshaped law enforcement in the United States by injecting huge sums of money into previously sleepy elections, with far-left candidates sometimes outspending their rivals tenfold, and still squeaking out only the narrowest victories. The strategy involves the idea that influence groups don’t have to convince legislatures to change laws if they can place prosecutors who will simply decline to enforce them.
I’ve said it before: This is a conspiracy to deny civil rights.
At some point these donors are going to be held accountable for the damage their organizations cause. The first step is outing them.
A bet a deeper dive into the finances of the Wren Collective will find donations for the U.S. NGO from other U.S. NGOs who have donations to them from off-shore established NGOs who have had donations from both the CCP and the Kremlin and possibly Qatar as well.
The Wren Collective like George Soros is by practice an intentional disruptor of U.S. domestic tranquility as well as an intentional force for Marxist cultural transformation.
Is there a list of each of the cities and prosecuters?
Maine Portland DA Jacqueline A. Sartoris,
Janet Mills former DA in Lewiston ME and Assistant AG of the state of Maine became the most radical leftist governor in the history of the State of Maine. And now at the ripe old age of almost 80 wants to run for the Senate. Mostly a power play to get a federal retirement benefit as well substantial state bennies and the apparent hundreds of millions her family has amassed during her tenure.
Look here and then follow to SEE: https://www.influencewatch.org/organization/wren-collective/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
The Wren Collective was founded in 2019 by attorney Jessica Brand as an independent nonprofit organization. 2 In 2022, the organization became a project of Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. 2
Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs is a left-of-center grantmaking and fiscal sponsor organization. 2 Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs was founded in 1987, at the time under the name American-Soviet Film Initiative, with the intent to promote Soviet culture in the United States through films and television produces in the USSR.
Following along to SEE: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/social-and-environmental-entrepreneurs-see/
Grant Samples
Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE’s)’ donations went to a variety of groups in 2023, including $75,000 to Alliance for Global Justice, a left-of-center fiscal sponsor funded by large grant making organizations such as the Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, and Arca Foundation; 7 8 $15,000 to Black and Pink Inc, a radical intersectional anarchist group that advocates for the abolition of criminal courts and prisons; 7 9 and SEE’s largest donation in 2023 was $257,000 to Native Movement, a Native American advocacy organization that promotes left-of-center views on gender, environmentalism, and social justice. 7 10
One of the many groups on SEE’s website which it indicates has its backing is We Re-Member. The group’s mission is to tie slavery to modern America’s racial challenges, and it describes America as a place of “transparent white supremacy and rising fascism.” 11
Another group on SEE’s website is the California Environmental Justice Coalition. The group is described as being “in resistance against environmental racism and injustice.” 12
In all the groups you are describing I bet a thorough FBI and treasury deep dive will find the groups in that web get donations from American NGOs that get donations from off-shore registered NGOs (Bahamas and Caymans) who get donations from foreign entities including from CCP China and Russia. The off-shore NGO entities are for the money laundering of foreigners donations so that it is not directly into the U.S. domestic NGOs.
If you want to actually dig, here’s a tight verification checklist you (or a friendly researcher) can run:
IRS Form 990s & Schedules
Pull SEE’s 990s (and any prior Wren-specific project schedules) for 2020–2024; scan Schedule I (grants) and Schedule F (foreign). Cross-match with OpenPhil, Arnold Ventures, Real Justice, Vital Projects Fund.
InfluenceWatch
+1
State charity registries
CA/NY/TX filings often list fiscal-sponsorship grant details that aren’t on the federal forms. (Names/amounts/years.)
Funder disclosures
Check Open Philanthropy and Arnold Ventures’ grant databases for “Wren” or SEE subgrants; note if any intermediary NGOs appear repeatedly (potential pass-throughs).
Arnold Ventures
FARA & DOJ NSD search
Quick hit to see if any Wren/SEE-linked intermediaries are registered or mentioned—useful for ruling in/out foreign influence.
Public records already surfaced
LE(L)DF “Outsourcing Justice” report appendices sometimes list EINs and wire info; mine those citations, then source the underlying documents yourself.
Fox News
As I have said...time to end any 501c3s etc who get more than $50-$100,000 per year.
I remember reading a few years ago that Soros $$ poured into leftists running for state attorney generals, prosectures, and so on. Many onw as the huge funding allowed massive advertising, and the good guys running were massively outsdpet.
Ping.
Trivia : A small bird known for its habit of holding its tail nearly erect revealing its butt to the world, and for the promiscuity of the males, who build several nests and then begins luring females, one at a time, to settle in with him (a female, even if she accepts his presentation, is never happy with the way his nest is built and only lays eggs after tearing his nest apart and reconstructing it to her satisfaction.) Once the first female is committed, lays her eggs and begins brooding them, the male leaves her to hatch and raise the chicks, and then goes and seduces another female and gets her established in the next best, and so on. Some wrens have a tendency to go about the acreage around their nests and make pinholes in the eggs of other birds, effectively aborting the embryos within so their neighbors’ eggs won’t hatch; this essentially wastes the other birds’ time and effort for nought, and the weeks benefit by having almost all of the area’s resources to themselves.
Kind of fitting.
Trivia...
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