Rep. Rob Wittman says the voters of his Virginia district need to know exactly who his opponent is before they cast a ballot this November.
Speaking on Breitbart News Daily, the Republican congressman said his challenger is a self-described "progressive prosecutor" whose record in the courtroom repeatedly let dangerous people back onto the street, including a sexual offender who had been charged with crimes against children. According to Wittman, the prosecutor dropped nine felony counts against that individual to a misdemeanor — an outcome that carried about one year in jail and no requirement to register as a sex offender.
"She had a sexual offender — somebody that sexually assaulted children, had nine felony counts against this individual, and she decided, well, no, I'm not going to pursue them as a felony count. I'm going to pursue them as a misdemeanor, which is nothing more than a traffic ticket," Wittman said.
Wittman told listeners the practical result is that a man accused of abusing children is now living back in a neighborhood — with no public registry telling parents who he is.
"Which means that individual who sexually abused children is now not only back out on the street, but is living in somebody's neighborhood, you know, potentially to sexually abuse children again," he said.
Wittman describes his opponent as the sitting chief prosecutor in Henrico County, and he pointed to another case he says shows the same pattern. A 51-year-old nurse was accused of abusing an 82-year-old Alzheimer's patient in an impaired-living facility — a case, Wittman said, that came with evidence from a police department, the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Board of Nursing. The prosecutor, in his telling, declined to pursue it.
"She decided, not going to prosecute the case, even after she had evidence from a police department, Virginia Department of Health, Virginia Board of Nursing. [She] decided I'm not going to prosecute the case. So this person was released back out in the street," Wittman said.
Six months later, Wittman said, that same individual went on to abuse more nursing home patients.
The congressman said the choice of charges in the child-abuse case stripped away the tools that are supposed to protect the public from repeat offenders — felony treatment, meaningful jail time and sex offender registration — while the nursing home case was never brought before a jury at all.
"These are just two examples of how unbelievably sympathetic she is to criminals," Wittman said. "So she doesn't support police. She's sympathetic to criminals. She doesn't stand on the side of victims. She doesn't stand on the side of the citizens in Henrico County who elected her as the chief prosecutor in the county."
Wittman's remarks came during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily, which airs weekdays on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern. The interview was first reported by Breitbart.
The race has turned prosecutorial decision-making into a central issue in a district that sits in the shadow of Richmond, where rising crime and violent repeat offenders have become regular topics at county board meetings and in homeowners association newsletters. Wittman's campaign has argued that the office that declines to bring charges is the office that decides what a neighborhood has to live with, and that the choice has already led to victims who would not otherwise exist.
The details of the two cases Wittman described — the number of felony counts in the child-abuse case, the agencies that provided evidence in the nursing home case, and the six-month gap before further abuse — come from his account of his opponent's record as told to Breitbart's audience. Voters in the district will get a chance to see the full record when they vote in November.
So far, the race has not been the only place in Virginia where the prosecutor question has come up. The state has been a proving ground for the left's experiments with judicial leniency, from reduced charges to diversion programs that let offenders avoid jail. Republicans say the results are visible in the neighborhoods where the cases end — families who find out a child molester does not have to knock on doors and tell them he is there, patients who cannot speak for themselves, and nursing-home staff who are put back on the floor with the elderly after only a police report, not a court order, says otherwise.
Our Take
There is no more revealing document in American politics than a prosecutor's own docket. A congressman votes on thousands of things; a prosecutor decides, case by case, whether a child molester goes on the registry or goes home, whether an abuser with three agencies' worth of evidence faces a jury or faces the next patient.
The progressive prosecutor movement was sold to voters as a smarter, fairer approach to crime. What it actually produces, again and again, is exactly what Wittman describes: nine felony counts that become a misdemeanor — "nothing more than a traffic ticket," in his words — and a sex offender who is walking the same sidewalks as our kids with no notice to parents. The people who pay the price for those decisions are not the ones whose names are on campaign literature. It's the 82-year-old Alzheimer's patient who cannot testify, and the six-month-later victims who should never have existed.
Every day this race stays framed as a choice between two candidates hides the real question: do you want a county that protects victims, or one that excuses their abusers? The record Wittman laid out answers it. Now it's the voters' turn.
