STUART VARNEY: Now you say that shoplifting is not a victimless crime. Ok. Obviously, it hurts small business and the retail sector – I got it, but what are you doing about it?
JASON MIYARES: Well, first of all, you know you hear a lot of data – there’s data that shows that poverty can produce crime, but there’s also an enormous amount of data that shows crime produces poverty. 2/3 of all new jobs created in America are created by small business owners. Small business owners don’t locate in high crime areas, and what we’ve seen is so much of this entrepreneurial class, they’re in retail, they’ve seen these organized retail crime heists that are going in, and then you have these left-wing special interests prosecutors that are getting elected that are just suddenly ‘we’re going to legalize theft,’ and so I’m the national chairman of the Protecting Americans Action Fund. Our goal is to stand up against these left-wing social justice prosecutors. Push back – we’re involved in about a dozen races last year, we’re going to be involved in a lot of races going forward, and you’ve seen how these left-wing prosecutors change these cities and these localities.
STUART VARNEY: So you want to make the consequences – the consequences for theft are punishment. At the moment, there are no consequences for theft in certain jurisdictions, but you want consequences.
JASON MIYARES: We want to elect prosecutors that actually prosecute and not be prosecutors that think they’re social workers, which is what happens.
STUART VARNEY: You can’t do that unless you get rid of, unseat, shall we say, some of the local DAs.
JASON MIYARES: Correct. The world is run by those that show up, and so what we’re doing is both recruiting, talking to, and encouraging those candidates, because here’s what’s happening – you have a race where the DA race maybe between the two candidates will spend $100,000 – $200,000, and then these left-wing groups will drop in $250,000 two weeks before the election and before you know it you have a prosecutor who won’t prosecute larceny, will do plea deals and they have a criminal first/victim last mindset, and the one voice that is always left out when we talk about social justice reform are victims. We want to be a voice for the victims, that’s why we have our group. We’re very proud of the work we’re doing and we are going to be doing in the future.
STUART VARNEY: Sir, welcome to the show, thanks for being on the show – I hope you can come back soon. We’d love to hear any progress on what you’re up to.
JASON MIYARES: Absolutely.