Miriam Krinsky left Fair and Just Prosecution months after staffers said she ‘oppressed, slighted, and discriminated against’ them
Progressive activist Miriam Krinsky was at the top of her game in early 2024. As the founder and leader of Soros-backed Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), she helped support the day-to-day work of the nationwide wave of progressive prosecutors elected in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Then it all came to a screeching halt when her own staff accused her of being a racist, according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
FJP, funded by billionaire financier George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, played a key role in supporting elected progressive prosecutors under Krinsky’s leadership from 2017 through 2024. The group paid for fellows to staff their offices, footed the bill for prosecutors to travel overseas to Europe to learn about “drug decriminalization,” and created training models to help the prosecutors “address systemic injustices” in the criminal justice system.
Krinsky’s September 2024 resignation—which FJP said was motivated by Krinsky’s desire to “spend more time with her family”—was a preview of the forthcoming electoral disaster for the group’s stable of elected progressive prosecutors, several of whom lost their jobs on Election Day last year. That includes former Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón, who was 1 of 12 out of the 25 Soros-backed prosecutors on the ballot last November who either lost their elections or faced successful recalls.
The former FJP leader’s downfall began on April 23, 2024, when an anonymous group of her own employees sent a message to the personal and work emails of 13 progressive prosecutors in the organization’s network. The employees accused Krinsky of making their black female colleagues “feel oppressed, slighted, and discriminated against,” though they did not detail any specific incidents.
“Many White staff who have not personally experienced this ugly behavior have witnessed these transgressions by Miriam,” the staffers wrote to the elected prosecutors, including Gascón and former Cook County, Illinois, district attorney Kim Foxx. “She is either unreachable in denial or willful in defiance.”
“Since FJP struggles with transparency and truth, clarity is called for: staff don’t want to meet with Miriam to discuss the problem,” the staffers added. “Miriam IS the problem.”
The emails, initially obtained by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund as part of an upcoming investigation into undue donor influence on progressive prosecutors, show candid communication between FJP and elected district attorneys went both ways.
The FJP staffers included a message they received from a black female district attorney who described herself as one of “the OGs” and accused Krinsky of relegating her to “2nd tier status” during the group’s events with elected prosecutors.
“I am incredibly disturbed at the diversity that has exited the room,” the prosecutor, whose name was redacted by the FJP staffers, wrote to the group on April 2, 2024. “So candidly, being removed from the conversation without even a discussion—while I have watched other elected that entered this space with me remain is nothing short of insulting and a slap in the face to those of us that have been leaning into this work for 8 years.”
Krinsky denied the allegations after one of the prosecutors, Albemarle County Commonwealth attorney James Hingeley of Virginia, wrote to her to express his dismay “that FJP is experiencing such discord.” In her response to Hingeley, Krinsky said the majority of her staff did not view her as a racist, saying the bulk of her employees were disappointed that someone chose to air their dirty laundry to their external “stakeholders.”
On Sept. 20, though, Krinsky announced her resignation from FJP.
“I feel that this is a good time to move on, while also devoting more time to my family,” she wrote in an email to the elected prosecutors in her network.
Neither FJP nor Krinsky returned Free Beacon requests for comment.
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