Judge Refers Soros-Backed Philly DA For Criminal Probe

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A federal judge has referred George Soros-backed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to the U.S. Attorney's Office for a possible criminal investigation, after finding that the city's top prosecutor and a senior deputy may have tried to mislead a court, pressure staff into a false story, and protect their own reputations while working to undo a murder conviction.

U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond, a George W. Bush appointee, removed Krasner and Conviction Integrity Unit chief Matthew Stiegler from the case and sent the matter to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

No charges have been filed. The referral itself is still a thunderclap: a sitting big-city DA, installed with Soros money and celebrated as a "reformer," now sits under a judge's finding that the conduct may amount to perjury, false statements, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.

? BOMBSHELL: A judge has formally referred George Soros-linked left-wing Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner for a DOJ CRIMINAL PROBE

Krasner allegedly pushed prosecutors to LIE and make FALSE STATEMENTS, and might involve criminal conspiracy charges ?

There was support to... pic.twitter.com/CunHqvg01g

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 16, 2026

Dennis Johnson was convicted in 2009 of second-degree murder in the killing of Kenyatta Smith during a botched robbery two years earlier. Two eyewitnesses identified him as the shooter.

In November 2010 he was sentenced to life. For years the Philadelphia DA's office opposed his post-conviction bids. After Krasner took office, that opposition collapsed. In 2022 the office supported a petition for Johnson's release, arguing ineffective assistance of counsel.

Judge Diamond found the office had gone hunting for reasons to "concede" the case. Stiegler assigned the file to then-Assistant District Attorney Jaclyn Mason, a lawyer with a patent-and-trademark background and, the judge wrote, "no experience as a criminal litigator."

Stiegler had already decided to seek Johnson's release after consulting Johnson's new lawyer and the local Innocence Project.

Diamond wrote that Stiegler "did not instruct Mason to do any independent investigation because it had already been done by Johnson's counsel," and that handing the file to an inexperienced prosecutor made it "more likely that she would not question his actions or order."

In June 2026 the office moved to withdraw the 2022 petition because of "material misstatements." Mason had resigned days earlier. In her resignation letter she said Stiegler had "used me to further his personal agenda of conceding in federal habeas cases regardless of the merits" and that she had "been asked to fall on my sword."

What followed, according to testimony Diamond credited, was not a cleanup. It was a scramble to protect the office.

On the same day the withdrawal motion went in, Stiegler blamed Mason, telling a colleague she "had purposefully inserted the false facts" and that "this was one hundred percent her fault, zero percent his fault."

Krasner, Diamond found, told line prosecutors that Stiegler had given him "this really good idea": go through Mason's other cases, find mistakes, "say that this was a pattern by her, and then file something with the Court saying that."

When those prosecutors balked and suggested sending the mess to the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Krasner refused.

One of them testified he said "we can't send it to OAG because essentially they're all evil" and "we have to have somebody in the room, in the courtroom to protect the office."

Diamond wrote that Krasner later referred to state lawyers as "Nazis," and threatened a prosecutor with unspecified "consequences" if the court was told about Stiegler's conflict: a "reputational interest in not doing a full investigation."

Diamond's memorandum is blunt. The evidence, he wrote, was "tantamount to a prima facie showing" of conduct that could constitute "false statements, false declarations under oath, perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy."

He found that Krasner and Stiegler "worked together to try to convince the Four to urge the Court to accept a false narrative," adding: "This might amount to criminal conspiracy."

"I have thus reluctantly concluded that Philadelphia's highest law enforcement official and one of his top assistants may have violated the law," Diamond wrote. "In these circumstances, with the issuance of this Memorandum, I refer the DAO, Mr. Krasner, and Stiegler to this District's United States Attorney's Office for investigation and other appropriate action."

Krasner's reply was the expected shrug. "I respectfully and vigorously disagree with the court's findings of fact and conclusions of law," he said. "I look forward to appealing to the higher court as soon as the law allows. This remains a pending matter, which limits for now my and my office's ability to respond in the media."

Johnson's bid for release is now in limbo. Diamond kept the DA's office on the case but threw Krasner and Stiegler off it. The man convicted of killing Kenyatta Smith is still waiting to see whether Philadelphia's "conviction integrity" machine can finish what it started.

Krasner did not arrive in that office by accident. In 2017, George Soros poured nearly $1.7 million into the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC backing him - more than five times what Krasner spent himself, and a huge share of all spending in a crowded Democratic primary.

Soros-linked groups later put more than a million more behind his re-election. A career defense lawyer who had sued the Philadelphia Police Department dozens of times was sold to voters as the future of "justice." Philadelphia then set homicide records. In 2021 the city logged more than 550 murders, the worst on modern books, and posted the highest per-capita homicide rate among America's ten largest cities.

That is the Soros prosecutor project in miniature. Through Justice & Public Safety PACs and related vehicles, the network has spent tens of millions electing DAs who treat incarceration as the enemy and repeat offenders as clients.

Los Angeles got George Gascón. Manhattan got Alvin Bragg. Chicago got Kim Foxx. Fairfax County, Virginia, got Steve Descano. The pitch is always the same: fewer prosecutions, weaker charges, early releases, "equity." The body count is always someone else's problem.

The Descano file is the nightmare version. In 2022 his office let Ronnie Reel, who had been indicted on sodomy and aggravated sexual battery for sexually abusing an 11-year-old, plead down to misdemeanor assault and battery.

Reel walked after time served. Descano's campaign had taken more than $600,000 from the Soros-funded Justice and Public Safety PAC. In May 2026, Reel was last seen running off with missing 17-year-old Autumn Van Zandt. That is not a theoretical critique of "reform." That is a child-sex offender back on the street because a Soros DA decided accountability was optional.

Voters have already started sending some of these prosecutors packing. A Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund tally found that of 75 Soros-linked prosecutors identified since 2022, dozens have left office or been replaced.

Of 25 who were on the 2024 ballot, 12 were beaten or recalled. The machine is still spending. Fox News reported last summer that Democracy PAC, now run by Alex Soros, had pumped roughly $1.7 million back into Justice & Public Safety PAC arms between March 2025 and April 2026. The product has not changed. Only the invoice has.

In August 2025, President Trump called for George Soros and his son Alex to face anti-corruption charges under the RICO statute over support for violent protests "and much more, all throughout the United States." "Soros, and his group of psychopaths, have caused great damage to our country," Trump wrote. "We're not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America any more, never giving it so much as a chance to breathe and be free."

Elon Musk's reply was short: "It's high time action was taken against Soros directly."

A month later, reporting held that a senior Justice Department official had directed at least six U.S. attorneys' offices to prepare investigative plans aimed at the Open Society Foundations.

That push sat on top of a Capital Research Center report documenting large OSF grants to groups critics describe as aligned with pro-terror networks, and on top of years of Soros cash into the prosecutor pipeline that produced Krasner, Descano and the rest.

Dark-money NGOs that spent a decade lecturing America about "democracy" are discovering that elections, and grand juries, can run in both directions.

Diamond's memo represents a federal judge stating, on the record, that Philadelphia's highest law-enforcement official may have broken the law while trying to spring a convicted murderer and then lean on his own prosecutors to sell the court a lie.

That is the logical end of a project that treated DAs as social-justice activists with subpoena power.

Soros bought the offices. The cities paid in homicides, robberies and children left in the path of men who should never have been free.

If the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia does his job, one of the original exhibit A's in that experiment may finally face the system he spent years dismantling.