Five inmates who escaped a New Orleans jail Friday remained at large Thursday, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has repeatedly suggested that Hungarian American billionaire George Soros is at least partly to blame.
Ten inmates escaped, five have been captured, and five remain at large, Louisiana State Police confirmed to The Daily Signal Thursday afternoon. A multistate manhunt is ongoing after the inmates escaped after midnight Friday from Orleans Parish Prison, the city jail for New Orleans. A technician at the jail faces charges for allegedly assisting the escape.
Landry, a Republican, pointed the finger at Soros, who supported the campaigns of local law enforcement, in one case indirectly. (The Open Society Foundations, which Soros founded and which often speaks for him, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.)
“This is what happens when George Soros funds New Orleans elections,” Landry said of the jailbreak on X.
He expanded on his remarks in a Tuesday NewsNation television interview.
Landry said the jail falls under Sheriff Susan Hutson’s jurisdiction, and he blamed Hutson and District Attorney Justin Williams for allowing the jail to become overcrowded. He said Hutson and Williams delay sentencing inmates, holding them longer in the jail before they can be transferred to state prison.
“George Soros came over the last decade or so and spent a ton of money in the city of New Orleans, electing these progressive people,” Landry said. “It’s like he came [as] Santa Claus, and inside his sack, he put out a DA [district attorney], a sheriff, and I think about six judges, and we have been having problems in that city ever since.”
Soros personally contributed $220,000 to the Louisiana Justice & Public Safety PAC, which supported Williams’ campaign in 2020, according to public records. PAC for Justice, which supported Hutson’s 2021 campaign, received $150,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to public records. The Open Society Policy Center gave Sixteen Thirty Fund $23.8 million in 2021, according to IRS records.
While donors besides Soros contribute to Open Society and donors besides Open Society contribute to Sixteen Thirty Fund, Soros does influence Sixteen Thirty Fund’s philanthropy. Neither the Open Society Foundations nor Sixteen Thirty Fund responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
Soros’ Prosecutors
Soros has spent money propping up local district attorneys across the country who champion a form of criminal justice reform that critics say goes soft on criminals and allows crime to fester.
“Unfortunately, George Soros and other liberal billionaires have focused on electing to office prosecutors who are committed to not prosecuting entire categories of crimes and not seeking appropriate punishments for those who are convicted of committing even violent crimes,” Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. He co-authored the book “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities.”
“This push to implement a radical ideological agenda has come at the expense of doing the basic blocking-and-tackling needed to keep communities safe, and, unfortunately, this appears to be yet another manifestation of that phenomenon,” Smith added.
Soros’s Open Society Foundations, now run by his son, Alex Soros, has bankrolled a broad swath of left-leaning organizations. It and Sixteen Thirty Fund form part of what I describe as the Left’s dark money network in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
Neither Williams nor Hutson responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
The Jailbreak and the Manhunt
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, is investigating the jailbreak, while the Louisiana State Police head up the effort to recapture the inmates.
State Police Lt. Jared Sandifer confirmed to The Daily Signal that the police arrested 32-year-old Cortnie Harris and 38-year-old Corvanntay Baptiste, who are the girlfriends of two escapees, according to Fox News Digital. Sandifer confirmed that Leo Tate (Harris’ boyfriend, according to Fox) remains at large while police captured Corey Boyd (Baptiste’s boyfriend, according to Fox) Tuesday.
Murrill’s office arrested 33-year-old Sterling Williams, a technician at the jail, on Tuesday, charging him with abetting the escape.
Inmates tampered with a cell door and sneaked out through a hole in the wall behind a metal toilet while Williams had stepped away for food after midnight.
One of the inmates asked Williams to turn the water off in the cell from which the inmates later escaped. Rather than reporting the inmate, Williams turned the water off, “allowing the inmates to carry out their scheme to successfully escape,” according to Murrill’s office.
Williams, the district attorney, called the escape “a complete failure of the most basic responsibilities entrusted to a sheriff or jail administrator,” CNN reported.
Hutson has suspended her reelection campaign in the jailbreak’s aftermath.
Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office Maj. Silas Phipps Jr. said the department was “underfunded, understaffed, underpaid.”
Murrill said, “Someone clearly dropped the ball, and there’s no excuse for this.”
When the inmates escaped, they left a message on the wall above the hole reading, “To Easy LoL.”
The inmates were in the jail on a variety of charges, including murder, aggravated assault with a firearm, and domestic abuse battery.
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