See more of our coverage in your search results.
Far-left billionaire George Soros has funneled more than $7 million to groups behind an Albany lobbying effort to pass a pair of woke parole bills that critics warn could lead to the freeing of “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz and other infamous murderers.
Soros’ grant-making network gave at least $7.1 million since 2016 to eight of 15 organizations that are founding members of a purported “grassroots coalition” called “The People’s Campaign for Parole Justice,” Open Society Foundation records reveal.
The campaign sanitizes the idea of releasing hardened murderers and rapists by calling it “decarceration and family reunification” — and lobbies the state Legislature to pass the potentially devastating Fair and Timely Parole and Elder Parole bills.
Soros’s network didn’t give directly to the campaign, but funneled megabucks into its founding organizations, including $3.2 million to FWD.us, which was created by Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley tech leaders in 2013 to fight for criminal justice and immigration reform. Zuckerberg reportedly stopped funding FWD.us last year as part of his more rightward shift since Donald Trump became president.
Other founding members that received Soros money include Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL) New York ($1.7 million), Legal Aid Society ($1.6 million), Center for Community Alternative ($250,000), Release Aging People in Prison ($180,000), Parole Preparation Project ($135,000), New York Civil Liberties Union ($100,000) and New York Communities for Change ($74,995).
The far-left kingmaker has poured more than $40 million over the past decade into supporting soft-on-crime candidates in district attorney races nationwide — and hundreds of millions of dollars more into organizations backing so-called “social justice” prosecutor candidates running on platforms aimed at reducing jail population, according to the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
“Only” Soros-backed groups — which predominately seek to dismantle Western Civilization greatness — “could concoct a jail-break scheme like this to demoralize and destabilize New York even further,” said Douglas Kellogg, state projects director for the conservative anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform.
“These are aggressive proposals that are out of step with the majority of states,” he said.
“If you’re a New Yorker paying the highest taxes in the nation, and the Soros, Democratic-Socialist left won’t even keep murderers in prison, then you have a crime to report because you’re getting robbed.”
Soros mouthpiece Michael Vachon declined to address that his boss could help serial killers get out of jail, huffing in an email, “the NEW YORK POST is a garbage dump — not actual journalism.”
The Elder Parole bill, sponsored by Sen. Cordell Cleare (D-Manhattan) of Harlem and Assemblywoman Maritza Davilla (D-Brooklyn), would let violent criminals dodge their minimum sentences, regardless of how heinous their crimes, and be granted early parole hearings after they’ve turned 55 and served 15 years of their sentences.
The second, the Fair and Timely Parole bill, sponsored by socialist state Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Queens), would require the state parole board to release convicts regardless of the severity of their crimes unless they are a “current” danger to the public.
The Elder Parole bill, sponsored by Sen. Cordell Cleare (D-Manhattan) of Harlem and Assemblywoman Maritza Davilla (D-Brooklyn), would let violent criminals dodge their minimum sentences, regardless of how heinous their crimes, and be granted early parole hearings after they’ve turned 55 and served 15 years of their sentences.
Previous versions of both measures have stalled in state Legislature going back to the 2017-18 session. However, both are gaining steam; they currently have enough votes to pass in the Senate but lack support in the Assembly.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who’s running for reelection and needs liberal NYC to support her, has repeatedly declined to say whether she’d veto the bills.
The People’s Campaign for Parole Justice claims on its website the measures are needed because “thousands of New Yorkers are serving brutally long prison terms as a result of our state’s draconian sentencing laws.”
“These laws are rooted in white supremacy and a parole release process plagued by racial bias, designed to punish and re-sentence rather than acknowledge change and transformation,” the campaign says.
However, critics warn the legislation coddles cold-blooded killers.
Jason Savino — whose mother Wendy Savino survived being shot at five times in April 1976 by “Son of Sam” murderer Berkowitz while sitting in her Jaguar in The Bronx – ripped Soros for funding the campaign.
“George Soros can hire old police detectives and other people that can carry firearms to protect him and his family,” said the younger Savino. “He is protected from what goes on in the street, and he uses his immense wealth — instead of for the betterment of society — to victimize everybody else.”