Below is my column in The Hill on the scathing rebuke of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner by the state Supreme Court. Krasner ran for reelection on the slogan “F–k Around and Find Out.” He just found out…
Here is the column:
District Attorney Larry Krasner is something of a bargain for Philadelphia. According to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, he has not only been serving as the city’s prosecutor but effectively as its top public defender.
Krasner’s record is the subject of a scathing new opinion, which accuses him of leading a dishonest effort to undermine major criminal cases to engineer new trials for defendants.
Krasner has long cultivated a reputation as the champion of the left. We were both liberal students in the same class at the University of Chicago. While I moved to the political center, Krasner moved even more dramatically to the far left. Funded by George Soros as part of his campaign to elect social justice warriors as prosecutors, Krasner has used his office to threaten to arrest FBI agents and to “hunt down” ICE officers, to the delight of the far left.
The chest-pounding has not resulted in any such roundups, but the press remains good for Krasner in cultivating his image as the avenging angel of the perpetually enraged.
That is why the recent opinion from Pennsylvania’s Democratic-controlled Supreme Court was so surprising. It appears that even these liberal justices have had enough.
In Commonwealth v. Brown, Justice Kevin Dougherty (joined by Justices Sallie Updyke Mundy, Kevin Brobson, and Daniel McCaffery) denounced Krasner and his office for a pattern of misleading and mendacious filings to undermine the criminal cases of murderers and other convicts.
These defendants filed for relief under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act. The Act allowed for an adversarial process to determine whether defendants should receive new trials. However, the district attorney’s office routinely abandoned the field, leaving defendants essentially unopposed in their demands.
The Supreme Court wrote that such concessions robbed the public of “the benefits of opposing advocacy.”
It went even further in alluding to Krasner’s possible political and ideological motivations in pandering to the far left. “When relief is not dictated by the record and law but merely advocated for personal, political, ideological, policy, or other non-legal reasons, a prosecutor’s concession does not minister justice,” the opinion states. “It facilitates injustice.”
Then came the haymaker — a finding that Krasner’s concession was “not reliable” and that Krasner’s office had “violated its duty of candor,” “withheld material evidence from the court, opposed efforts by amici to gain access to this evidence, submitted a false stipulation of fact, misstated facts in its pleadings, failed to conduct a reasonable investigation, and opposed a required evidentiary hearing.” In this case, the justices wrote, the “predictable result was the erroneous grant of a new trial.”
The justices cited a pattern by which, since 2018, his office has conceded relief in roughly 100 murder cases like the one at issue. It found that his office engaged in “numerous instances of untrustworthy concessions, lack of candor, misrepresentations of fact, lack of adequate investigation, and avoidance of hearings. And the problems are poised to continue.”
The justices were clearly alarmed because there are more than a thousand cases still in the pipeline, and Krasner’s office is expected to continue what they called “its checkered concession program.”
To give you an idea of the cases where Krasner’s office struggled to undo the conviction of murderers, consider the facts of the 1984 case of Robert Wharton. Wharton was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1984 strangulation and drowning deaths of Bradley and Ferne Hart. Wharton was upset about a debt, so he broke into their home, killed the Harts, and then turned off the heat, leaving their seven-month-old baby, Lisa, to freeze to death. The baby miraculously survived.
The court expressly cited Krasner’s prosecutors for making misrepresentations to the court. That included the claim by Krasner’s office that the family of the victims had bizarrely favored undoing the conviction. It was later discovered that Krasner’s staff had consulted only one relative, who was not the couple’s surviving daughter. The daughter, in fact, vehemently and understandably opposed the move. Krasner was ordered to write apology letters to the family.
Ultimately, the actions of Krasner’s office were so outrageous in this case that a panel of judges disbarred his supervisor for repeatedly lying in an effort to overturn the conviction. Krasner’s subordinate, Nancy Winkelman, was also barred from handling cases before the court for three years.
In response, Krasner did what he always does: He suggested that the criticism furthered racism and threatened democracy. He declared that the criticism of his office “undermines the value of a vote in Philadelphia” and defended his staff as merely furthering the work of racial justice: “On the eve of Juneteenth, we should all remember that reform is necessary in every era. And that those who bring needed reform sometimes are made to pay a price.”
This is vintage Krasner. His office was found to be both dishonest and negligent, but the district attorney cites his own misconduct as proof that his office is fighting hard for racial justice.
It did not matter that in 2021 a court admonished Krasner for creating what amounted to an unconstitutional blacklist of police officers whom he would not call as witnesses, even if their testimony was required to convict a criminal.
It did not matter that Krasner was admonished by a state Supreme Court justice in 2022 for abusing the grand jury process in an unhinged effort to charge a police officer with a crime.
Krasner feeds a rage addiction with uncut, pure criminal justice crack. It is a formula that has served him well with the media and the voters. Like Atlanta’s Fani Willis, he actually turns court sanctions into a badge of honor with voters who distrust the police and the criminal justice system.
In fact, the more the courts condemn him, the more he suggests that the criticism is just evidence of a prejudiced, unjust legal system.
None of this comes as a surprise for a candidate who expressly adopted “F— around and find out:” as his 2025 reelection slogan. But courts are finding out a bit too much about how Krasner himself has been … well … messing around with the legal system.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.“
Turley Writes:
“While I moved to the political center, Krasner moved..
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Let’s be honest here. The whole purpose of this blog is to promote rightwing narratives one never sees in mainstream media.
With regards to political columnists, the center is somewhere between Thomas Friedman and David Brooks. Whereas Turley is further right than George Will.
But we all imagine ourselves as being in the political center; simply because it sounds more reasonable.
ROFL
The Entire MSM together has lower ratings than Fox – they are on the left they are no longer Mainstream.
Frankly Even Fox is barely mainstream. Increasingly people are being informed by alternative Media.
It is these that define the Center.
No Freidman and Brooks do not define the Center – while neither are extreme – neither reflect the views of even their side of “center” – They are both out of step with the people.
Turley is a pretty good reflection of just left of Center today – though THIS BLOG focuses on legal and particularly
first amendment issues and While Turley is excellent and usually correct on those – it is not that he is not mainstream on those – it is that most of the “center” does not have the same well developed sense of those issues.
ROFL – the so called main stream media has been replaced by instagram and facebook and bluesky. The only reason that Fox retains ratings is their audience can’t find support for their positions on instagram and facebook and bluesky. The Left is seeing an increasing spread of outlets for their news so the older areas see a decline; the right is being distilled to a tiny speck.
What we will see with ABC and CBS as owned by conservatives is that the Left will leave the networks as they are crippled by billionaires behind and the Right will still turn to Fox for all their propaganda needs.
Without strict accountability, our judicial system is The Most Corrupt Institution in the world. Men and women who devoted their lives to learning The Law, use their knowledge to protect themselves from scrutiny and in-depth investigations. The media is long gone. The money they had to pay just to pursue the hints of crimes committed by the folks donning black nightgowns, was not only prohibitive, but the accompanying retaliatory consequences for trying to find dirt on this super-sophisticated criminal enterprise were/are exceedingly dangerous.
Too bad no one remembers Operation Greylord. Dear GOD, we are in trouble.
Operation Greylord was an investigation conducted jointly by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Chicago Police Department Internal Affairs Division and the Illinois State Police into corruption in the judiciary of Cook County, Illinois.
Moments after a would be assassin’s bullet almost removed his skull, merely bloodying and grazing his right ear miraculously, and as he was carefully rushed from the stage where he had lain defenseless, he faced the shocked, dismayed and enormous crowd of supporters, clenched his fist and shouted, “Fight like hell.” “Fight like hell!” “Fight like hell!”
Yet, no one accused him of attempting to incite a riot. Where is wok when you need a little consistency?
Laken Riley
Trump nicked his ear on the hammer of a Secret Service holstered weapon when the agent shoved Trump down.
Trump lives because the assassins refuse to practice their shooting ahead of time. He cannot even attract a decently skilled assassin.
* After all the hurley burley is said and done what I’m mostly worried about is WW11.
😏
Trump’s Sanity In Question
President Donald Trump on Monday claimed again that “vandals” had damaged the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, citing that as a reason to begin new repairs on the controversial project, but he has so far declined to offer evidence.
Trump first made his claim on Saturday: “They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Monday, he increased his estimate of the gash to 300 feet in a morning social media post, and then 350 feet in an afternoon exchange with reporters.
“They went in there with the knife,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/22/trump-says-vandals-slashed-reflecting-pool-hasnt-shown-evidence/
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Taken at face value, Trump’s claims on this matter appear to be the rantings of a senior with dementia.
Are we to believe someone stepped into the reflecting pool, with a machete perhaps, and cut a 350 foot gash?? How ludicrous!
No wonder the war in Iran went nowhere. Our president is nuts!
^ Posted from an insane asylum ^
Trump “has so far declined to offer evidence.”
Except, of course, for the five people arrested for vandalizing the reflecting pool and the five issued federal citations.
The Left always plays this deceptive game of “no evidence.” It is hard to see with your eyes wide shut.
Sam, show us a news story listing those 5 people and the circumstances of their arrests.
Arrests are evidence of arrests, not evidence of any crime.
Trump’s followers are worse. Imagine someone walking the length of a football field, down the middle, cutting the sod with a knife, cameras all around, troops all around, and no one saw a thing.
And what’s the story with that law? Is it new? Is it constitutional? Appeals and bids for new trials without end? Where, wink, wink, the City of Philadelphia doesn’t even put on a case? Get the revisor of statutes’s office on the phone now. I’m getting a whiff of Elias.
Turley Writes:
“Krasner has used his office to threaten to arrest FBI agents and to “hunt down” ICE officers, to the delight of the far left.”
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Turley highlights ‘FBI’ and that links a Newsweek article From July 23, 2020.
Below are 3 paragraphs from that article conveying the essence:
* * * * * *
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has accused President Donald Trump of “acting like an authoritarian dictator,” while vowing to criminally prosecute any federal agents who attack Black Lives Matters protesters under his jurisdiction.
The Trump administration this week announced plans to send more agents to additional cities as part of Operation Legend, a Justice Department initiative aimed at using federal law enforcement to fight a “sudden surge of violent crime” in cities. Philadelphia was one of several Democrat-leaning cities specifically named by the president.
“I’m going to do something, that I can tell you,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “We’re not going to let New York, Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these… Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.”
https://www.newsweek.com/philadelphia-da-says-trump-acting-like-dictator-threatens-arrest-feds-1520158
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This article was published about 6 months before January 6th. So how did the FBI go from being Trump’s enforcers to ‘stoking riots’ at The Capitol?
In other words, If Trump was confident enough to threaten left leaning cities with a beefed up FBI presence, then how did the FBI become, just 6 months later, agents of the left, instigating violence at The Capitol to discredit ‘peaceful’ Trump supporters??
The truth is that baloney about the FBI stoking riots at The Capitol was nonsensical bullsh!t.
^ Stupid anti-American propaganda generated by a bot programmed by the Chinese Communist Party ^
ATS
“This article was published about 6 months before January 6th. So how did the FBI go from being Trump’s enforcers to ‘stoking riots’ at The Capitol?”
They didn’t – From before the Trump presidency through the end of Biden’s presidency the FBI and much of the executive branch was working against Trump.
This is incredibly well documented – and you left wing nuts were cheering them on – are YOU now somehow oblivious to YOUR OWN claims in the past ?
Do you think Comey, Strzok, Wray, Page, … any of these people were “Trump’s enforcers”
These people hated Trump and were out to get him by any means necescary
Of COURSE they sent people to the Capital on J6.
Regardless of what you might wish to beleive about WHY – it is a FACT that FBI Agents were sent to the capital and a FACT that if Wray and others did not actively LIE about that – that they with absolute certainty HID IT for years.
You can play word games and mind games all you want – but denying reality just makes you look stupid.
but then – if the shoe fits
Why send people to the Capitol on Jan 6th to remove Trump when that was already going to happen? The voting was done. The counting was done. All that was required was the largely ceremonial acceptance in the House of the results.
No one bombs their victory parade. Trump assembled a bomb and told that bomb to go attack the Capitol and fight like hell or they would lose their country. In the end, no one lost their country.
Because they knew it was a Stolen Election as does anyone with half a brain, that would rule out Biden of course.
Since the conversation was about the FBI enabling the stealing, how did it get to there from being the jackboot thugs Trump trusted just a few months before to round people up?
Read the thread before pitching in some off-topic comment. Thanks.
John Say, there is NO PROOF whatsoever that the FBI stoked the riots on January 6th. NO PROOF AT ALL!!
If that were true then why are all the surveillance videos not being released? Even a dunce can figure that one out.
There are some 44,000 hours of videos. That’s more than twenty-two years of a salaried job, presuming holidays and vacation. I say release the it all on the requirement they don’t let you out of the viewing room until you have watched all of it. You and 1,000 of your friends would still need more than 2 years to accomplish it.
I guess being worse than a dunce prevented you from figuring that out.
A good moment for this old saw, no?
Q: How do you get away with murder Camden?
A: Dump the body in Philadelphia.
A low life with authority—a bad combination.
Why in the “H” hasn’t he been disbarred? And to the voters in Philadelphia, wake up!
Why hasn’t Ken Paxton been disbarred?
Texas’s state bar commission dropped their effort to have him disciplined after a precedential opinion by the Texas Supreme Court.
Got anything but lame whataboutism?
So the Texas State Bar is more credible than Pennsylvania’s?
Why, what has the PA bar done about Krasner? Have they started any disciplinary proceedings, and if so, what is the status of those proceedings? You seem to know about this, so why not lay out the facts?
@anonmyass perhaps you don’t remember Raymond Donovan, Secretary of Labor. On May 25, 1987, Donovan (and all of the other defendants) were acquitted with a number of jurors openly applauding the verdict, after which Donovan was famously quoted as asking, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
Or Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell’s conviction in a classic Virginia kangaroo court system that ignored the law and prosecuted “an opponent” on made up charges not within the law. The Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments on the case on April 27, 2016, and UNANIMOUSLY vacated McDonnell’s conviction on June 27, – after of $27MM in legal fees to McDonnell.
The Paxton prosecutions in Texas were not different – and thus convictions did not happen or vacated.
Kangaroo courts have become “the rage” of the United States of America.
Perhaps he hasn’t been disbarred because those who would do the disbarring are in favor of what he is doing. As for the voters, you seem to be assuming the vote is legitimate. If it is possible to rig a presidential election would it really be all that difficult to rig a DA race? If reality doesn’t fit ones expectations of it, such as a DA getting elected for *not* doing their job, that can be taken as a sure sign ones assumptions about reality are in need of reexamination.