A hospital employee said Eric Clingan, who works under Virginia commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano, was ‘there almost every day’
A senior prosecutor who works for George Soros-backed Virginia commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) was cited this month after police found him drinking beer outside an animal hospital at 8 a.m., according to a Wednesday report.
Eric Clingan, a Fairfax County senior assistant commonwealth’s attorney, was issued a court summons for drinking alcohol in public, a Class 4 misdemeanor, ABC 7News reported. On August 8, Fairfax police responded to a call from an animal hospital employee who said a man was “drinking beer and smoking cigarettes” in a nearby parking lot, according to dispatch audio obtained by 7News. The employee told police that Clingan “is there almost every day.”
This is not the first time prosecutors in Descano’s office have faced controversy. The commonwealth’s attorney himself has come under fire for his ties to left-wing multibillionaire George Soros, who has poured hundreds of millions of dollars to bankroll controversial causes. Soros’s Justice and Public Safety PAC donated more than half a million dollars to Descano’s campaign in 2019, helping him oust a 35-year veteran prosecutor in the Democratic primary, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
In 2020, Descano also distributed a policy memo urging assistant commonwealth’s attorneys to seek misdemeanor charges over felonies whenever appropriate. Days later, Descano’s office reduced felony charges against Gerald Brevard III, who had been facing abduction and burglary counts carrying decades in prison, to lesser offenses, allowing Brevard to leave prison after just five months. Brevard was later indicted for killing two homeless men and injuring three others in a shooting spree along the East Coast.
Descano has long drawn scrutiny for being soft on crime. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin (R.) earlier this month called on Attorney General Jason Miyares (R.) to investigate Descano for repeatedly failing to prosecute violent criminals after a video showed a man with a lengthy criminal record attempting to kidnap a toddler at a mall.
“Steve Descano’s record here is a broken one, and it repeats over and over again,” Sean Kennedy, the president of Virginians for Safe Communities, told 7News at the time. “Victims are discarded. The law is ignored, and at the end of the day, public safety is imperiled.”
Clingan, who has worked under Descano since October 2021, has handled several of Fairfax County’s highest-profile cases and is the lead prosecutor in the “Au Pair affair” double murder trial, scheduled for October. Descano’s office told 7News in a statement that, following the citation, Clingan is “on leave to focus on a personal matter.”
