Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Zach Wahls promoted an anti-police bail fund that helped free dozens of Black Lives Matter rioters arrested in the wake of George Floyd’s death for attacking officers, vandalizing businesses, and smashing the windows of a courthouse in downtown Des Moines. One of the freed agitators attempted to set the courthouse on fire.
Wahls, a state senator, wrote on May 29, 2020, that there was “a lot of hand-waving going on about protests, riots, looting, etc.,” and that “disorder co-occurs with injustice.” He said the “key problem that has to be solved here is a white one.”
Hours later, riots gripped downtown Des Moines and continued the following night.
After the two nights of destruction and arrests, Wahls encouraged his followers on X to help free the detainees.
“@eicommunitybond has set up a fund to help Iowa #BlackLivesMatter protestors make bail. I’m donating, and I hope you will, too,” Wahls wrote. He linked to a webpage for the Eastern Iowa Community Bond Project, which in October 2020 was renamed the Prairielands Freedom Fund (PFF), seeking donations “to free protesters of police violence.”
“We stand with everyone demanding justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the countless other victims of police violence. All funds raised here will go directly to pay bail for protesters to bring them home safe,” an archived version of the fundraiser reads.
By the end of the week, donations to PFF more than quadrupled from $40,000 to roughly $175,000, allowing the bail fund to free more than 60 protesters. It continued helping release violent agitators as the riots raged through the summer, including assailants who attacked police and at least two career criminals, one of whom was ultimately convicted of trying to burn down the Polk County courthouse.
Wahls’s support for a bail fund that freed violent rioters with criminal histories puts him at odds with many Iowa voters as he faces a June 2 primary against state Rep. Josh Turek as he and Turek vie for the seat Sen. Joni Ernst (R.) is vacating. Even at its height, Black Lives Matter was divisive in the state, with only 45 percent supporting the movement early January 2021, according to an Iowa Policy and Opinion Lab poll.
And former vice president Kamala Harris, who lost Iowa to President Donald Trump by more than 13 points, routinely in 2020 faced criticism for promoting the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which freed murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals from jail.
Wahls’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Less than two hours after Wahls promoted PFF, the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) Central Iowa chapter posted its own endorsement. That same day, the socialist group launched the Des Moines Mutual Aid Bail Fund, which immediately partnered with PFF through pooled donations and a shared fundraising page.
The combined effort helped PFF rake in over half a million dollars by October 2020 as the bail funds jointly and indiscriminately continued releasing violent offenders. PFF said it had “paid bail for every protester who requested our assistance … regardless of the cost of bail or charges.”
Among them was Lonnie Williams, who was arrested in August 2020 on a first-degree arson charge for launching a lit firework through a window of the Polk County courthouse during the protest the night before Wahls’s post.
His detention was short-lived: DSA activist Ronnie Free, a self-described “abolitionist” and “class (war) clown,” posted $25,000 to free Williams the same day he was arrested, court records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.
Williams, whose rap sheet includes convictions dating back to 2011 for felony drug possession, shoplifting, and theft, pleaded guilty to attempted arson in April 2021 and was sentenced to two years of probation.
The joint effort also led to the release of Khatija Janette Mills, a career criminal who was arrested and charged with second-degree criminal mischief following a May 31 Sioux City protest that injured five police officers, court records show. She was released two weeks later when Molly Free, Ronnie Free’s wife and fellow DSA official, posted her $3,000 bond.
Later that month, Mills was arrested again and charged with assault causing bodily injury. She was sentenced to two years’ probation for her first arrest and slapped with a $315 fine for her second following guilty pleas.
Mills’s rap sheet dates back to 2018, with charges including an aggravated assault, DUIs, marijuana possession, and retail and motor fuel thefts. She has since faced additional arrests for criminal mischief and theft and is serving a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to a bodily injury charge in October 2024.
On at least two occasions, the bail funds helped free Indira Sheumaker. First, Molly Free posted Sheumaker’s $10,000 bail after Sheumaker was charged with felony criminal mischief for allegedly vandalizing a police vehicle during a June 20 protest, though that was ultimately dismissed when the district attorney declined to prosecute.
She was then accused of putting a Des Moines cop in a chokehold during a July 1, 2020, protest outside the Iowa state capitol and was charged with felony assault on a police officer—Free again paid her $300 bond. Sheumaker pleaded down to an aggravated misdemeanor assault charge and was sentenced in May 2021 to two years of probation.
Six months later, Sheumaker was elected to the Des Moines City Council.
Wahls’s endorsement of PFF also ties him to much more radical positions than he has publicly expressed. PFF, which has been repeatedly promoted by the Community Justice Exchange, a project of the George Soros-funded Tides Center, has long called to abolish ICE and began pushing to defund the police shortly after Wahls promoted the group.
Today, PFF primarily focuses on paying immigration bonds for illegal aliens and advocates for abolishing ICE.
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