George Soros bought the Philadelphia DA's office in 2017.
That investment just landed his prosecutor in front of a federal judge.
What that judge found inside the DA's office is now headed to the DOJ.
Philadelphia's Conviction Integrity Unit Tried to Free a Murderer It Never Investigated
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner spent years paying back the investment that George Soros put into his initial 2017 campaign.
He let criminals walk and turned the DA's office into a criminal defense advocacy operation, calling Republican oversight "anti-democratic."
The Pennsylvania House voted 107-85 to impeach him in 2022, and it didn't stick.
Jim Jordan's House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed him in July for protecting illegal aliens from prosecution, and he ignored that too.
So Krasner kept going – until a federal judge finally had enough.
The trouble started in 2022, when convicted murderer Dennis Johnson filed yet another federal habeas petition seeking to overturn his 2009 second-degree murder conviction.
State courts had already said no multiple times, but Krasner's Conviction Integrity Unit chief, Matthew Stiegler, saw an opportunity.
Stiegler had been meeting with Innocence Project lawyers and public defenders "many, many times" – not to evaluate whether Johnson deserved relief, but to determine which claim would be easiest to concede.
He assigned an inexperienced ADA named Jaclyn Mason to draft the concession filing. Mason was a former patent and trademark attorney with no criminal litigation background, and Stiegler told her she didn't need to investigate because the Innocence Project had already done so.
The filing went to federal court in November 2022, telling the judge that Krasner's office did not oppose granting Johnson's petition – effectively arguing a convicted killer deserved to go free without anyone at the DA's office having interviewed a single witness.
Krasner and Stiegler Face Perjury and Obstruction Referral After Their Own Prosecutors Testified Against Them
In June 2026, four of Krasner's own prosecutors figured out what had happened and signed a motion to withdraw the 2022 concession, saying it contained "material misstatements."
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office went further, telling the court that Krasner's team had made "significantly misleading statements" to the magistrate judge overseeing the case.
U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond – a George W. Bush appointee – held hearings, and the testimony those hearings produced was far worse than the filings had suggested.
Stiegler's testimony was "contradictory, evasive, or outright dishonest," according to court documents obtained by the Daily Caller.
Stiegler then lobbied the four prosecutors to pin the entire mess on Mason, suggesting they dig through her old case files to find additional errors and "paint her as a rogue actor," according to court testimony.
Krasner embraced the strategy, telling the four prosecutors the idea had originated with Stiegler and directing them to execute it – then personally editing the withdrawal motion to reduce Stiegler's involvement in the original concession filing.
Mason figured out she had been set up and resigned from the DA's office.
The four prosecutors refused to go along and kept talking to the court.
Diamond concluded that Krasner and Stiegler had worked together to feed the court a false narrative. His 40-page memo calls that criminal conspiracy and obstruction – and he disqualified both men from the case and referred them to the DOJ for criminal investigation.
Krasner told The Federalist: "I respectfully and vigorously disagree with the court's findings of fact and conclusions of law."
The Innocence Project co-strategized with Krasner's office on which murder conviction claims to concede. Diamond's referral puts them in the DOJ's sights too.
Soros spent years building a prosecutor network designed to treat criminals as clients and courts as obstacles. In Philadelphia, that produced a DA who lied to a federal judge and set up a junior attorney to take the fall – a man who called the Republican AG's office "Nazis" when they tried to step in.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had already flagged Krasner's "repeated failures of candor" in a May ruling requiring his office to notify the AG before seeking to overturn other convictions. That warning didn't slow him down.
The Trump DOJ now holds the referral, and there is no election he can win to make it go away.
Sources:
- Chris Bray, "Soros-Backed Philadelphia DA Referred For Criminal Investigation," The Federalist, September 16, 2026.
- "Federal Judge Disqualifies, Accuses Top Soros DA Of Possibly Committing A Crime For Trying To Free Murderer," The Daily Caller, September 16, 2026.
- Ed Morrissey, "Whoa: Federal Judge Removes Krasner From Case, Asks DoJ to Investigate Perjury, Obstruction," HotAir, September 16, 2026.
- Nick Arama, "Whoa: Fed Judge Just Referred Soros-Backed Philly DA to DOJ for Possible Criminal Investigation," RedState, September 15, 2026.
- Matt Vespa, "Philly DA Larry Krasner, Who Threatened to Jail ICE Agents, Slapped With DOJ Criminal Referral," Townhall, September 16, 2026.
