>> the prosecutor has a higher duty than other attorneys. her duty is to seek justice, not simply to obtain convictions. as the american bar association notes, the prosecutor should seek to protect the innocent and convict the guilty, consider the interests of victims and witnesses and respect for constitutional and legal rights of all persons including suspects and defendants. needless to say, prosecutors play a vital and indispensable role in the fair interest administration of criminal law. as members of the executive branch at the local, state or federal level, they, like all other members of the executive branch, take an oath to support and defend the constitution and faithfully execute the law as written. they do not make laws. that duty falls on the legislative branch. for our purposes, road prosecutors are elected district attorneys who have been funded or inspired by george soros who buy into the idea that the entire criminal justice system is to its -- is systemically racist and needs to be dismantled. there are four common features to these road prosecutors. they usurp the constitutional role of the legislative branch by refusing -- [indiscernible] they abuse and misunderstand the role of the local prosecutor. -- violent -- [indiscernible] >> keep in mind the following facts. violent crime and incarcerations peaked in the early 1990's. both had declined dramatically as crime rates are the lowest they have been in decades until recently. incarceration rates are the lowest they have been in decades. this did not happen by accident. nor did it happen because of road prosecutor's policies. it happened because real prosecutors, democrats or republicans that follow the law and protect victims rights created -- and more. they are the real progressives. the road prosecutor movement started in 2014 with money from george soros to unseat three pro-death penalty elected da's. after removing those da's from office, they decided to expand their goals and geographical so -- scope young just unseating pro-death penalty da's but all da's who did not subscribe to their radical pro-criminal ideology. they realize that the da is the gatekeeper to the criminal justice system. she decides who gets prosecuted, who does not end what crimes to enforce. the movement first national candidate was kim fox in chicago who unseated the first democrat latina elected to office at the cook county da or states attorney. since then, the movement, funded by soros and others has provided the funding or inspiration for most of the road prosecutors across the country including well-known folks like larry krasner and philadelphia, mosby in baltimore, gardner in st. louis -- in san francisco and former boston da now massachusetts u.s. attorney rachael rollins. the movement is animated by two ideas. first, that the entire criminal justice system is systemically racist. second, the only way to remedy the situation is to come as one prominent left leaning professor wrote, reverse engineer and dismantle the criminal justice infrastructure. both claims lack merit. dismantling the criminal justice system infrastructure is dangerous, as recent violent crime statistics show. the sad irony of the road prosecutor movement is it causes most harm to the very people they claim to care the most about. minorities. in today's symposium, we will explore two unique aspects of this movement. first, how united states attorneys in cities with rogue prosecutors have carried out their duty to enforce the law. second, how the claims of the road prosecutor movement, mass incarceration over policing are false. how their policies affect real victims. hosting the first panel is my friend and heritage colleague and co-author zach smith. he is a legal fellow here at heritage. he previously served for several years as an assistant attorney in the northern district of florida. he spent two years at a major law firm here in washington. where he joined after clerking for the honorable emmett cox on the united states court of appeals for the 11th circuit. [applause] >> if our panelists can go ahead and join me on stage. thank you for the kind introduction. i am pleased to be joined onstage today by three distinguished guests. each of whom previously served as united states attorney. by way of background, there are 93 u.s. attorneys in the united states and each attorney is the chief federal law enforcement officer in his or her district. local district attorneys are charged with prosecuting state and local crimes. u.s. attorneys are charged with overseeing federal prosecution. traditionally, the local da's and u.s. attorneys offices have worked together to keep their communities safe. the recent wrinkle is the introduction of rogue prosecutors and many of our nations cities. our panelists will help us discover this phenomenon and how u.s. attorneys can do their jobs effectively even when the local da is a road prosecutor. to my left is andrew leveling, partner in the boston office of jones day. he served as the united states attorney in massachusetts from december, 2017 to february, 2021. andy was a federal prosecutor for 20 years and focused primarily on international drug trafficking and white-collar crime including securities fraud and international money laundering. to andy's left is aaron cox, partner in kirkland and ellis sand practices in the government regulatory and internal investigations group. she is the former u.s. attorney for the northern district of texas and was only the third female u.s. attorney in the district's 142 year history. in that role, she chaired the attorney general advisory group, a group of 15 u.s. attorneys selected by the attorney general to advise on national priority. she was only the eighth female to serve in that capacity. to aaron's leftist richard donoghue who currently practices at a major law firm in new york city and practices in the area of corporate -- and white-collar defense. rich served as the u.s. attorney in the eastern district of new york and served as the principal associate deputy general in the department of justice answered for a number of years as an army jack officer whose duties included -- prosecutor and defense counsel. thank you for joining us. since our time is short, i thought we would get right into it. one of the questions i have and i think many people have is, what can u.s. attorneys do to pick up the slack in many of these cities where rogue prosecutors have been elected and what can u.s. attorneys do to help combat the lack of prosecution and many of the cities and verizon violent crime? andy? >> i see this as moving on to -- two tracks. one is the rhetorical side something rogue prosecutors underestimate is the need to present a tough message about crime. it matters what officials say publicly about crime and the need for order and the need to reduce violence and drug use. on the technical side, u.s. attorney's can use the various federal statutes we've got to pick up the slack, literally. if you're watching cases proceed on the state level and you think cases are being dismissed that should not be, or charges are being brought that are too lenient, you can step in with a federal prosecution even before the state has resolved. this does not happen often. when it does happen, it really makes a statement both to the public and the local da that you are there watching and you are there to enforce what you think is the public interest, even if the local da is not willing to do that. >> you mentioned all of us served on the attorney general advisory committee. one of the things we did in the interest of the entire department was talked about the need to look at the local community and for u.s. attorneys across the country to understand the needs of their local community and where we felt like local district attorney was not stepping in. we were encouraging and supportive of the u.s. attorney to form stronger connections and ties with local and state authorities and step in where they could with federal charges. when we saw crime rates rising, where we sought a need for federal charges, the entire department was very supportive about that because we understood our single most important obligation as u.s. attorneys was to lead the effort to make community safer in this was one way we could make a significant impact. >> i agree fully with everything. to give a little bit of context, you need to understand how small we are versus our state colleagues. i had about 100 25 criminal prosecutors in the eastern district of new york which covered five counties. by comparison, there were probably 1400 or so state prosecutors in our jurisdiction. when you realize the difference in the workload and the difference in headcount, you have to be selective in what you pick. we do have a tremendously potent arsenal, particularly when it comes to crime drivers such as drugs and gangs. that apartment has long pursued projects such as project safe neighborhood, project trigger lock and other task force approaches where we look -- work very close with state and local law enforcement agencies, sometimes with the da, sometimes without. we are uniquely situated to be able to come in on the right cases and target the defendants who are the real drivers of crime numbers and remove them from the community. if we do that well, we can have an outsized impact on the crime rates in our communities even though we are small compared to the state. >> you mention federal prosecutors have potent tools in their arsenals. one of the things that would be helpful to discuss is what are the advantages to indicting someone federally versus the state? are they less likely to get released on bail? do they serve longer sentences? what are some of those tools and a prosecutor prasad arsenal they can use to effectively combat crime? >> just to touch on some highlights come up a new york perspective we have a debtor's bail system. it is really about pretrial confinement. there has been a lot of discussion in new york over what they call bail reform. in some sense it is a disassembling of the bail structure in new york. thankfully there has been public response we see in election results and otherwise. there are attempts now in albany to undo some of the damage that has been done but we do have a system where when you have a defendant in custody, you can bring them in front of the judge and the judge can consider everything that is relevant. the strength of the evidence, whether they are a flight risk, whether they are a danger to society. these are things that new york state judges have been specifically report -- precluded from considering. we have that advantage feared we also have an advantage of being able to charge racketeering offenses and larger conspiracy cases, which is typically the case in court. you can capture more criminal conduct and more participants in criminal conduct and we have more mandatory minimums and we have higher sentences. absolutely key in violent crime is when you get convicted in federal court then you are serving a federal sentence, you are going to be removed from the community. it is very likely you are going to be far from new york city. therefore it is not a situation where fellow gang members can take a short ride to visit you. there are a lot of advantages in the federal system prosecuting people but we have to be selective in who we target. >> i think two things i would add to that. number one on the issue of bail, and the federal system it is so important because federal prosecutors are the ones that moved to detain. we have the ability to assess that and we put on evidence. the judges make the decision. therefore when we encounter violent criminals, we feel like if they are a danger to the community or flight risk we have the obligation to move to detain. in texas that is not how it works. the only way the prosecutors can move to detain as after the initial determination. and for whatever reason, that's not happening. oftentimes defendants are being let out after having committed very violent crimes. this is another way the federal prosecutors are having to pick up slack, where -- is being let out after being charged with very violent crimes. you hear this a lot, this refrain from police, that they are completely demoralized by the fact that they are out arresting violent criminals and within 24 to 48 hours, the criminals are back on the street. how are they going to make any real impact in creating a safer community when they have done their jobs and get these criminals are not being detained. when there are federal charges, the feds do try to step in and moved to detain. most often we do get those criminals detained because we put on the evidence that they are a danger to the community. with respect to -- we tend to go quicker in the federal system for dark cases tend to get resolved either by guilty pleas or trials. we have less volume, we have the speedy trial act, so we cannot get our cases moving through the system faster than the state. >> the only thing i would add is a corollary. >> street-level gang members are pretty sophisticated in the difference between federal and state systems. if you keep in mind a view from the street, you see the potency you have of the federal side. the average gang member who gets arrested on a state charge knows he's probably going home that day. but if he is arrested federally he is much more likely to be detained. he is more likely to be convicted and more likely to go to prison on a mandatory minimum or some substantial period. once that person gets arrested, he never comes back. other people in the community see that and they know that, that on a federal charge, you're going to see him in five years. whereas on a state charge, you are going to see him for dinner. that has genuine value which the current crop of prosecutors don't really understand. they don't build that into their own calculations. >> to add to andy's point, victims know this as well. when you are in a community and you are trying to get people to cooperate with law enforcement, if they know that guy is good to be home for dinner, they are understandably not cooperating. there is a real fear that is well-founded where if he is detained prior to trial and they see people are removed from the community for significant periods of time, they feel safer in terms of cooperating with law enforcement. >> when prosecutors make announcements about the limitations they are putting on crimes, when they say we are not going to prosecute marijuana offenses if you have less than a trope or two ounces, that gets out on the streets very quickly. suddenly the police departments are not finding people with more than four ounces or two ounces, whatever the limitation has been publicly disclosed. it is absolutely something the street gangs are wise to. >> to piggyback on that, one of the things that many rogue prosecutors say is that they are not prosecuting what they have termed quality-of-life crimes. low-level drug offenses, theft below a certain level, so they say they can focus on more serious crime. i would be curious to get your perspective of that particularly because you said one of the benefits of being a federal prosecutor is to focus on the worst offenders. rich? >> quality-of-life crimes are important and it is a red herring to say we don't have the resources to enforce the more they are not worth enforcing or they have a disparate impact on minorities. i do not think any of those arguments withstand scrutiny. first of all, a lot of these quality-of-life crimes lead to larger things. we were talking earlier about how a lot of cases in new york city have been made starting with the turnstile jump. the guy who jumps the turnstile has a gun, the gun is linked to a murder. or he's got distribution quantities of drugs. those crimes matter. enforcement of those crimes matters and the police departments know it. they have seen it. we have historically driven crime down for 25 years. quality-of-life policing was a big part of that. now unfortunately in the last for years we are seeing the consequences of it. quality-of-life is -- and when these prosecutors wave the wand and say this entire class of crimes will not be enforced, again, it reduces their ability to effectively protect the community and also strips away legislative power and things of that sort. it really does damage the life of our citizens and the city day today because law-abiding citizens find themselves ceding the public wary of criminals because they have no choice. >> to play out a line, you take criminal sentencing that is fairly innocuous, say criminal trespass. we are not going to prosecute criminal trespass and you think it's not a big deal. what you have to play out is you from a business owner in a shopping center, now the police department is not going to persecute you for criminal trespass. you start having two or people showing up in the parking lot, nobody can shoot them away. now, 68 people show up. now they are playing dice. a few of them have guns, they're selling drugs, now you have a gang problem. and it all started because you couldn't call the police to get the people from hanging out in your parking lot. that is a criminal trespass, a very minor offense. without being able to prosecute that or even the deterrent effect of being able to call the police and have them threatened to arrest on that. you have shopping centers that have masses, open-air drug selling and it all started with the ability to gather and no ability to deter that. there's very little the feds can do about that. so you have this type of nonprosecution going on that just leads to bigger and bigger problems. >> to follow-up on that, one of the things we were talking about earlier was this idea of prosecutorial discretion. a lot of rogue da's are not prosecuting those crimes and saying they are using prosecutorial discretion. can you talk a little about why that is not a traditional understanding of prosecutorial discretion? >> prosecutorial discretion does not mean you get to, as a prosecutor, decide wholesale you're not going to prosecute certain crimes. it does not imbue a prosecutor with legislative authority. if a prosecutor has discretion on any case, given the fact to take the case were not. what i could not do as a u.s. attorney's say there's a whole class of federal crimes i just will not prosecute. importantly, here's a press conference to announce the crimes i will not prosecute. that is simply not prosecutorial discretion. when you do that it creates real problems for your community. >> i think that's all exactly right. you can see this trend developing over the course of several years with an overall reduction of respect for certain laws. marijuana is a great example. a number of states have passed laws allowing possession and distribution of marijuana while knowing it is illegal under federal law, knowing that federal laws supreme. they do it despite that. that is an intake -- indicator along the line of this trend. i think what you are seeing with rogue prosecutors is an absolute intrusion into legislative function. categorically carving out immunity for certain crimes, they are short-circuiting the legislative process. the legislator may have decided -- i think the da in dallas can decide to not charge larceny for under $750. if the legislature wanted that, it would have done that. >> just a follow-up on one of aaron's points, it is not as if we are seeing these prosecutors say, well as a matter -- and within my prosecutorial discretion i am not going to pursue these. because i need to apply those resources throughout the criminal chain. what we are seeing is them select, basically disassemble the system from top to bottom. in new york, murder one is a limited class murders. you see da's in new york city saying now, we will not pursue life withou