soros black lives matter painted street
© REUTERS / Lisi Niesner; Youtube / Kerry Leidich cle/5f0839b22030273d400ebf98.jpgGeorge Soros (L); Woman painting over BLM slogan threatened with 'hate crime' charge
Democrats and the US mainstream media have insisted that tales of George Soros' malign influence on US politics are conservative conspiracies. Americans targeted by prosecutors whose elections he financed can testify otherwise.

Take the case of two Californians who are facing 'hate crime' charges for painting over a Black Lives Matter mural outside the Contra Costa County courthouse during the Independence Day weekend.

Nichole Anderson and David Nelson are being prosecuted by District Attorney Diana Becton, who described BLM as "an important civil rights cause that deserves all of our attention," (emphasis added) and insisted that "we must address the root and byproduct of systemic racism in our country."

A former judge with no prosecutorial experience and dogged by accusations of plagiarism, Becton was elected in 2018 thanks in no small part to $275,000 poured into her campaign by Soros.

The Hungarian-born Democrat mega-donor became obscenely wealthy through currency speculation, before turning his eye towards influencing politics. In addition to funding various Democrats in state and congressional races, Soros invested heavily in local elections, where his money could make a much bigger difference.

He specifically targeted district attorneys, who in the US make all the prosecutorial decisions on a local level. In 2018, he invested more than $2.7 million in DA races in California, according to the Los Angeles Times. This was on top of the more-than $16 million he spent since 2014 on 17 district attorney races across the US, with his candidates winning 13 of them.

One of those candidates is Kim Gardner, the circuit attorney in St. Louis, Missouri since 2017. She returned the favor almost immediately, playing a key role in the prosecution of Republican Governor Eric Greitens over alleged invasion of privacy. The case eventually imploded, but not before it served its purpose in forcing Greitens to resign.

Given Gardner's history, it should not have come as a shock when she released every single person arrested during the George Floyd riots at the end of May, which claimed the life of retired police Captain David Dorn.

Nor should it be a surprise that Gardner is currently trying to find a way to press charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who defended their house with a rifle and a handgun after a crowd of 'peaceful' Black Lives Matter protesters demolished the gate of their community last month.

The McCloskeys have already been vilified in the media as racist, for daring to stand up for their property against the mob that threatened to kill them, and they have had to board up the house due to repeated violent demonstrations outside. To make the irony even greater, Mark is a lawyer who has represented victims of police brutality. None of it matters to Gardner, of course - the Narrative must be served.

Kim Foxx of Cook County, Illinois is another Soros-funded DA. She infamously tried to cover for actor Jussie Smollett after he staged a hate crime against himself in February 2019. Though Foxx dropped the charges, Smollett is now facing a special prosecutor.

Even in races where Soros did not get directly involved, Democrats who won embraced his policy of 'criminal justice reform'. While it sounds lofty in theory, in practice it has mainly consisted of refusing to prosecute most offenses committed by minorities in the name of 'racial justice'.

For years, Democrats have denounced 'big money' in politics. That rhetoric suddenly stopped once Soros became openly involved. Any time anyone brings this up, they denounce it as a "right-wing conspiracy theory" and even anti-Semitism - though the Israeli government begs to differ. Yet the proof of the pudding is in selective prosecutions, driven by racial grievance-mongering and intended to send a message to Americans that some people are, actually, above the law.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic