D.A. & Real Justice PAC Make Mockery Of Local Election Laws

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

If Larry Krasner is reelected D.A. next Tuesday, it will be the second straight victory at the polls for an upstart band of lawless, libelous carpetbaggers from San Francisco known as the Real Justice PAC.

The Real Justice business model is to parachute out-of-town activists and tons of outside money and influence into local elections for D.A. that the carpetbaggers have no stake in. The result for the locals is a blitzkrieg. 

Who are the brains behind this gorilla operation? In 2018, while campaigning in California campaign for a fellow progressive prosecutor, Pamela Price, running for Alameda County D.A., Krasner pointed out in the crowd "two of the smartest political people I know in my world."

The first smart person that Krasner paid tribute to was Rebecca Bond, pictured above. She's the treasurer and co-founder of the Real Justice PAC, who has led the field operations in Krasner’s two campaigns for D.A. It was Bond, as Krasner’s political guru, who assembled a team of out-of-town activists and brought them here to Philadelphia in 2017 to elect Krasner with innovative high-tech strategies that bombarded targeted voters with 36,000 phone calls and more than 160,000 text messages.

Bond previously served as the PAC's advisor to both Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign and the 2018 Beto O'Rourke for Texas Senate Campaign. Since 2016, she has set up two LLCs, a nonprofit and three PACs, including Real Justice, all of which operate out of the same small three-story building in the Mission District in San Francisco. And boy are they rolling in cash. 

Since 2017, campaign finance records show, more than $10 million has flowed through Bond’s three PACs. Bond has subsequently redistributed the money to her LLCs and nonprofit, in addition to funding various progressive political activities around the country, such as Larry Krasner’s two campaigns for D.A. 

But when Bond moved the money to her LLCs and her nonprofit, it was no longer subject to campaign finance reporting requirements at the state or federal level. So the public has no clue what's going on.  

According to its website, the Real Justice PAC was founded in 2017 to "fix our broken criminal justice system" by electing "reform" D.A.s across the country. The PAC has served as a cash cow for Larry Krasner and his political campaigns. Since 2017, the Real Justice PAC and its leaders have funneled more than $230,000 to Krasner, including $109,000 in cash. 

The Real Justice PAC has also paid $106,813 to Brandon Evans, the national political director at Real Justice, who has served as Krasner’s campaign manager since 2017. 

Evans, according to Krasner, is the second of the two "smartest political people I know." Since 2019, Evans has worked out of an office at 1221 Locust Street in Philadelphia that Real Justice rents from Krasner. Besides managing Krasner's political campaigns, Evans has also managed fellow progressive Jim Kenney’s 2019 reelection campaign for mayor.

To reward Evans for his efforts, the Real Justice PAC also funneled another more than $50,000 to Evans through Bond's nonprofit known as the Grass Roots Law Project. 

Both Bond and Evans did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did D.A. Krasner and Jane Roh, his official spokesperson. 

Nothing new there; they've been stonewalling my requests to hold them accountable for the past 21 months. That's how Larry rolls; as transparent as mud. 

When I visited Real Justice's offices today at 1221 Locust Street, which are owned by that noted tax deadbeat Larry Krasner, who owes $53,966 in property taxes plus interest, nobody picked up a call from a phone booth posted outside the building. 

Instead, calls to Real Justice at extension 3002 were being bounced to the Larry Krasner for D.A. campaign committee, located next door at extension 3003, but nobody was home there either. 

In just one year, 2020, the Real Justice PAC lavished more than $100,000 on Krasner's reelection committee including $75,000 in cash, $29,450 in rent money, and in-kind contributions of $10,375 paid to Krasner’s campaign staffers. 

Since Philadelphia's limit on annual contributions from a PAC is $12,600, however, all that cash, in-kind contributions and rent money created a legal problem for Krasner. As in what to do with all that excess cash.

So it was time to spin the lazy Susan.

In recent filings from the Krasner for District Attorney committee, Krasner reported that he paid Bond’s Social Practice LLC $160,000 for "marketing services." Krasner also had to pay back more than $40,000 to the Real Justice PAC, including $14,750 in cash, and $26,000 for “staff time.”

But Real Justice is still doing all kinds of favors for Krasner. Like funneling a total of $18,000 to three local politicians who have enthusiastically endorsed Larry Krasner for reelection.

According to the latest campaign finance report filed by the Real Justice PAC, in just one day, April 22nd, the Real Justice PAC paid the "Friends of Maria" $6,500, "Jamie for West Philly" $6,500, and the "Friends of Joanna McClinton $5,000.

Maria is Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez. Jamie is Jamie Gauthier, who's running for relected to the Philadelphia City Council. And Joanna McClinton is the state representative for West and Southwest Philadelphia, as well as Yeadon and Upper Darby.

"Philadelphia needs a D.A., like Larry who has a proven record for caring about people, seeking justice and changing the unacceptable course which has created an unfair system," Quinones-Sanchez tweeted. "This transformational change takes time, and we need Larry to stay the course."

"For decades, Philadelphia has had a broken justice system where the prosecutors's office ran roughshod over communities of color, while turning a blind eye to police misconduct," Gauthier tweeted. "In his first term, Larry Krasner has changed the culture and restored faith that the D.A.'s office serves everyone, not just the powerful," Gauthier wrote. "I am proud to endorse him."

Krasner, according to McClinton, "has kept his promise by rolling back those harmful policies of mass incarceration that destroyed black and brown communities . . . We need him in a second term."

What these progressive gals didn't mention is the human cost of Larry's revolution -- a murder rate that's jumped from 315 in 2017, the year Krasner first got elected, to 499 murders last year, a 58% increase.

And, with 191 murders so far this year, we're on pace that's 39% higher than last year's rate, a pace that will put the city at nearly 700 annual murders. And who are the victims? They're 87% black and between 10% and 12% Latino, allegedly the minority groups that Krasner is trying to emancipate from mass incarceration. Yet they're paying the bill for Krasner's progressive reforms in the form of dead bodies that's perfectly acceptable to Quinones-Sanchez, Gauthier and McClinton. 

When it comes to violating the city’s campaign finance laws, both Krasner and Real Justice are repeat offenders. Two years ago, the city’s Board of Ethics finalized an agreement that called for both the Real Justice PAC and Krasner's campaign committee to pay a total of $23,000 in fines and forfeitures for breaking city laws back in 2017, when Krasner first got elected D.A., with donations over and above the city's legal limits.

But this time around, Krasner and Real Justice are brazenly violating the city's campaign finance laws, and nothing's being done about it. In the face of yet another Real Justice blitzkrieg, the city is as defenseless as Poland when it was invaded by Hitler. 

J. Shane Creamer Jr., executive director of the city's ethics board, which is charged with running fair elections in this town, would only say that he couldn't confirm or deny whether the toothless tiger he oversees is investigating all that illegal cash that's flooded the D.A.'s race. 

In a May 22, 2017 press release, Bond bragged about the effect Real Justice's contributions and embedded staffers had on Krasner's first victorious campaign:

In the world of criminal justice and the fight to end mass incarceration, Krasner’s win in the Democratic primary over six former prosecutors in the Democratic primary to serve as 
Philadelphia’s next district attorney was a massive earthquake. And RealJustice PAC was at the epicenter . . . 

Real Justice PAC made the greatest contribution of any organization directly to the Krasner
for District Attorney campaign. While there were many independent efforts, we placed three
seasoned organizers inside the campaign, a bigger commitment than any other organization.

In part as a result of their relentless efforts and experience with innovative technologies rarely used in a municipal race, they helped make it possible for volunteers to personally send over 160,000 text messages and make over 36,000 phone calls to the voters the campaign targeted as most needing to hear Larry’s message.

And while volunteers talking to voters was the soul of the campaign, every campaign needs funding, and Real Justice PAC also raised more than $36,000 directly into the Krasner campaign. This is a significant percentage of funds raised in a municipal race and it made a real difference because the money could be used directly by the candidate to cover the campaign’s most pressing needs.

This year, in addition to brazenly violating the city's campaign finance laws, Real Justice has added libel to its political bag of dirty tricks. 

Shaun King, a co-founder of Real Justice and its chief fundraiser, has been running an online smear campaign against Carlos Vega, a career homicide prosecutor who is Krasner’s opponent in Tuesday's Democratic primary

On his Twitter account, King has called Vega a “super villain,” a “monster,” and “the most evil man in Philly,” and made what Vega's lawyers have said are provably false claims about Vega’s record as a prosecutor. 

In response, Vega has notified King that he’s going to sue him, Real Justice, and Krasner’s campaign committee for libel and slander. 

Real Justice kicked off its political endeavors with $2.25 in seed money from Cari Tuna of Palo Alto, CA, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who's married to Dustin Moskovitz. He's Mark Zuckerberg's roommate at Harvard, and a co-founder of Facebook who has a net worth estimated at between $12 and $16 billion. 

For the Real Justice PAC, which seeks to elect “reform” D.A.s around the country, Larry Krasner was their first successful roll-out. After Krasner got elected, Krasner went barnstorming around the country, to campaign for other progressive prosecutors running for office with Real Justice’s support. 

Before the pandemic hit, during his first 28 months in office, Krasner went on a barnstorming tour, bankrolled in part by the Real Justice PAC, where he visited 47 cities across the nation, as well as Vancouver, Berlin and Portugal.

While on tour, Krasner was busy giving lectures about criminal justice reform and recruiting future prosecutors at top law schools. He also found time to campaign on behalf of a half-dozen other progressive prosecutors supported by the Real Justice PAC, including Genevieve Jones Wright, who ran for DA in San Diego in 2018 and lost; Tiffany Caban, who ran for District attorney in Queens N.Y. and lost; Chesa Boudin, who in 2019 was elected D.A. of San Francisco; and Pamela Price, who ran for D.A. of Alameda County and lost.

Krasner’s tour, records show, ran up more than $100,000 in expenses, 85% of which were paid for by taxpayers; the rest of the expenses, not all of which have been disclosed, were picked up by campaign supporters such as the Real Justice PAC.

The vast majority of Krasner’s campaign contributions, some 75%, are from out of state contributors, mainly from San Francisco, while almost all of Carlos Vega's contributions are from locals. 

Besides being a founder and treasurer of the Real Justice PAC, Rebecca Bond, Krasner's political guru, is also a partner and treasurer at The Social Practice LLC, which defines itself as "an ideologically driven political consultancy." She's also the principal and treasurer of Bernal Alto LLC and treasurer of the Grass Roots Law PAC. 

All of Bond's organizations are busy passing cash around to each other.

According to campaign finance records, the Real Justice PAC has paid Bernal Alto $564,149 for election management and services, travel, organizing services and consulting. Real Justice also paid $464,323 to the Social Practice, the vast majority of which was for campaign consulting. In addition since 2019 the Grass Roots Law PAC has paid the Social Practice LLC $207,959 and the Real Justice PAC $408,875.

Krasner, Bond, King and the Real Justice PAC are all inextricably linked. As Krasner seeks reelection, the Real Justice PAC is hawking Krasner’s book, For The People; A Story of Justice And Power, just published last month.

The PAC is advertising online to "Help Re-Elect Larry Krasner And Stand with Us For Transformational Justice." The ads seeking donations all the way up to $1,000 and above openly proclaim that "Your contribution will be split evenly between Real Justice PAC - Unlimited and Larry Krasner."

On Tuesday, voters will decide whether these lawless, libelous outside agitators who can't vote in the election should be allowed for a second time to impose their will on the populace, by reelecting Larry Krasner as our progressive but notably corrupt and incompetent D.A.