Congressman Meuser Introduces Bill Holding Ideological Prosecutors Accountable

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Congressman Dan Meuser (PA-09) introduced H.R. 6999, the Holding Prosecutors Accountable Act. This legislation seeks to force weak-on-crime prosecutors to do their jobs and uphold our state and federal laws.

Specifically, this legislation would make prosecutors’ offices that fail to prosecute at least 67% of arrests for violent crimes ineligible for Department of Justice Byrne Grants, which is the leading source of federal justice funding to state and local jurisdictions. Increasingly in our country’s major cities, ideological prosecutors are allowing criminals to go unpunished. For example, in our nation’s capital, Washington, DC, only 44% of arrests were prosecuted in FY23. Shockingly, a 44% prosecution rate in DC is in-fact higher than the prosecution rate in nine of the last ten years in the city. In FY22, the prosecution rate in Washington was just 33%.

Additionally, the legislation would require prosecutors’ offices that serve jurisdictions larger than 380,000 people to publish their prosecution rate data on an annual basis. Most jurisdictions do not make such data public, and the American people have the right to know how many criminals their local, often elected, prosecutor is releasing without pursuing charges.

Meuser said, “Perhaps the greatest responsibility of a government is to assure the safety and well-being of its citizens. But far too often in recent years, woke prosecutors have failed to pursue charges against criminals that police officers have often risked their lives to arrest. Instead, prosecutors have inserted their own ideological, political agenda into the justice system and deemed themselves judge and jury. The failure to prosecute such an alarming number of arrests has emboldened criminals as they now believe their illegal, violent actions will go unpunished. We have seen the devastating result of this soft-on-crime mentality as violence skyrockets in our nation’s major cities. My bill seeks to hold prosecutors accountable and helps ensure George Soros-backed ideologues are not releasing criminals back onto our streets without consequence. Commonsense says that when you increase the prosecution rate of dangerous criminals there will be fewer offenders in our communities to commit acts of violence.”

In 2023 compared to 2022 in Washington, DC, homicides were up 35%, armed robberies were up 67%, motor vehicle thefts were up 82%, carjackings were up 103%, arson was up 175%, and violent crime as a whole was up 39%. In the past several years, three of Congressman Meuser’s eight staffers in Washington have been robbed at gunpoint, and in late 2023, the Congressman’s car windows were smashed while parked outside of his residence in DC.

Text of the legislation can be found here.

Fox News covered the introduction of the legislation. The article can be found here.

###