‘We do this work without any billing or publicity,’ the Wren Collective told former Portland DA Mike Schmidt
A consulting firm funded by left-wing billionaires has embedded itself in the offices of 40 progressive prosecutors, where it has quietly helped to craft soft-on-crime policies that now affect 48 million Americans across 22 states. Known as the Wren Collective, the firm provides its services to the prosecutors for free and with no expectation of publicity, according to a new report by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF).
The Wren Collective’s clients include former Portland district attorney Mike Schmidt, who took office in August 2020, when riots sparked by George Floyd’s murder engulfed the nation. Emails obtained by LELDF show Schmidt held a call with Wren Collective senior attorney Amy Weber, who said her organization was prepared to offer his incoming administration draft policy proposals ranging from the elimination of cash bail to prosecuting police misconduct.
“We should have mentioned this as well—we do this work without any billing or publicity,” Weber told Schmidt. “These policies will be yours, not ours. We are just here to help you figure out how to implement meaningful changes to the criminal justice system in Portland.”
“Attached are two model policies (probation and bail) that we wrote for Virginia commonwealth attorneys,” Weber added. “While these aren’t specific to any particular office, they are tailored to Virginia law. We thought these would give you the best idea of what we have to offer.”
The Wren Collective is bankrolled by several left-wing billionaires. It received over $500,000 from the Texas billionaire John Arnold, who has invested more than $46 million into progressive criminal justice reform efforts since 2019. The firm also received $295,000 from a group run by disgraced Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King, the Real Justice PAC, and $250,000 from Open Philanthropy, a group run by Cari Tuna, the wife of Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz.
The group worked with some of the most left-wing prosecutors in the country, including former San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin, Burlington, Vt., state’s attorney Sarah George, and Monique Worrell, the state attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida. Boudin held weekly “comms huddle up calls with the group”; George worked with Wren Collective to decriminalize prostitution; and George shared confidential case files on a murder case with the Wren Collective before she decided to decline charges in the matter.
Schmidt, for his part, took the Wren Collective up on its offer, inviting Wren Collective founder Jessica Brand, a former public defender, to attend meetings with his transition team on June 29, 2020, emails obtained by LELDF and shared with the Washington Free Beacon show. A few weeks later, on July 24, 2020, Weber provided the incoming district attorney with a copy of the Wren Collective’s draft policy to ease prosecution of protest-related criminal cases, the emails show. Schmidt took office on Aug 1, 2020, and 11 days later, the district attorney publicly announced a new protest prosecution policy that was “nearly indistinguishable” from the version he privately received weeks earlier from the Wren Collective, according to KSAT Portland.
Schmidt’s office dismissed hundreds of criminal charges against violent protesters involved in the George Floyd riots in Portland shortly after the policy went into effect.
Schmidt, who left office in January, is just one of 40 progressive prosecutors who have worked with the Wren Collective since its creation in early 2020, according to the LELDF report, which is based on records it received from 23 Freedom of Information Act requests it submitted across the country. In total, the LELDF said it submitted 65 public records requests, but most offices “engaged in bureaucratic obstruction” or demanded “exorbitant fees for production” in order to avoid releasing the files to the public, the report states.
The Wren Collective was founded as a for-profit Texas organization in early 2020, but records obtained by LELDF show the firm counts on outside funders to finance its day-to-day work with progressive prosecutors. Of the 40 progressive prosecutors LELDF confirmed to have worked with the Wren Collective, only two—former Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascon and Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty of Minneapolis—paid the firm with taxpayer funds for its services.
“This is a much deeper problem than people understand,” said LELDF policy director Sean Kennedy, who led the group’s research into the Wren Collective. “Progressive prosecutors are not part of some organic movement. They are simply the face of a carefully designed and highly coordinated campaign to undermine the American criminal justice system from within. Our research shows that donors fund the production, activists write the script, the Wren Collective directs the scene, and their client prosecutors dutifully act out their parts.”
The Wren Collective did not return a request for comment.
