Steve Descano: America’s worst prosecutor

The George Soros-funded Commonwealth’s attorney for this suburban county of 1 million has openly stated he won’t enforce the law when it clashes with his ideology. The results have been ugly:

Richard Cox was already a serial sex offender when he exposed himself in a women’s locker room in Fairfax, but Descano let him go — and he proceeded to expose himself in a high-school girl’s locker room.

SOROS-FUNDED PROSECUTOR STEVE DESCANO AND FAIRFAX COUNTY’S BOOMING BROTHEL INDUSTRY

Abdul Jalloh was arrested more than 30 times, including for malicious wounding, but was repeatedly set free. He is now accused of stabbing Stephanie Minter to death on February 23.

Gret Glyer was executed in his bed, in a calculated assassination. Descano last month let the killer go with an insanity plea.

And a Chinese pimp ran a brothel in a residential neighborhood, across the street from a school bus stop. While police did everything they could to shut it down, Descano’s office dropped the prostitution charges and let the place continue operating until the Republican attorney general got it shuttered.

These are just a few of the stories that illustrate Descano’s extreme toleration of criminals and harm to his constituents.

Soros-funded ideologue

Descano is in office because of left-wing billionaire George Soros.

Descano was first elected as Fairfax County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney in 2019 when he knocked off the incumbent Raymond Morrogh in the Democratic primary, winning by 1,500 votes in a low-turnout election.

Descano raised about $1 million between the primary and the general election, a shocking amount for a downballot county race. About two-thirds of his cash came from two Soros-funded organizations, the Justice and Public Safety PAC and the New Virginia Majority PAC.

Soros was the champion of “criminal justice reform” at the time, and Descano was one of his proteges.

In that 2019 primary, when the ACLU asked the candidates to refuse to enforce certain laws, Morrogh answered, “We are a nation of laws, not men. I’m not a super legislature. I can’t decide, and should not decide what laws to prosecute and what not to prosecute, nor should Steve.”

Descano sees it differently. He sees his position as an opportunity to single-handedly legalize things that state and local legislatures have banned. He told the ACLU, for instance, “I’m going to ask to get all charges dismissed when they’re related to people possessing marijuana.”

He later wrote in the New York Times that he would effectively nullify the law within Fairfax County if Virginia was to restrict abortion.

In that op-ed, Descano used a telling turn of phrase. “The real threat,” was not law-breakers, he wrote, but “the real threat, I now realize, may stem from those who write the law.”

In other words, democratic legislators were his enemy. The criminals were not.

Descano also tried to single-handedly turn Fairfax County into something a sanctuary county: “Wherever possible,” Descano’s website declared until recent minor edits, “Steve will make charging and plea decisions that limit or avoid immigration consequences.”

This is a naked admission of discrimination. Descano’s stated policy is to prosecute a U.S. citizen more harshly for a given crime than he would prosecute an illegal immigrant.

Sure enough, in 2025, Descano’s office declined to prosecute Wilmer Osmany Ramos Giron for allegedly strangling the mother of his child. Instead, they hit Giron with a misdemeanor charge for brandishing a machete.

Descano’s office said this reflected the wishes of the victim, but she told local reporter Nick Minock that she wanted her assailant locked up for 15 years because “he’s dangerous.”

In 2023, local trial lawyer Ed Nuttall challenged Descano in the Democratic primary. Backed once again by Soros money, Descano won reelection. Descano declined to run for state Attorney General in 2025, instead endorsing Jay Jones, who famously fantasized about murdering moderate Republicans.

Brothels and perverts

Last summer, residents of the Greenway Downs neighbodhood and Fairfax County police worked together to try and shut down a whorehouse in a residential neighborhood. Their main obstacle was Descano’s office

Rose Spa was very obviously a house of prostitution, which is illegal in Virginia. The police busted the place multiple times, but couldn’t do much besides issue tickets for minor infractions. “Our hands are tied,” the police repeatedly told neighbors. Descano was the one tying their hands.

Prostitution, in the view of progressive reformers, is just another consensual activity between adults.

Soros non-profits have lobbied for the legalization of prostitution. His Open Society Foundations published a book titled 10 Reasons to Decriminalize Sex Work. Justice for All, which bankrolled Descano, also funds “legal services and protections to individuals engaged in consensual sex” as part of fighting the “criminalization of sex work.”

Also, the brothel owner and the prostitutes were all Chinese immigrants, and so any prosecution could have “immigration consequences.”

In July, the police hit Rose Spa with a misdemeanor prostitution-related charge. In August, Descano’s office dropped the charge and let the brothel skate. Weeks later, Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares leaned on the landlord to expel the sex business.

Descano has protected far worse perversion, though.

Richard Cox was a repeat Tier-III sex offender in June 2024 when Fairfax police arrested him for exposing himself in a women’s locker room. Cox’s defense: He identified as a woman.

Knowing he was a repeat sex offender, Descano’s office nevertheless dropped the charges against him in July. Thus set free, Cox prowled about other women’s locker rooms in the area for months, including Arlington County swimming pools that doubled as the pools for local high schools.

Arlington eventually prosecuted Cox for exposing himself to girls in locker rooms, and subsequently found him in possession of child pornography.

Descano’s Murderers

The murders of Stephanie Minter and Gret Glyer brought Descano’s radical leniency back into focus in February.

Glyer, who founded an organization to help fund charities, was asleep at home on the night of June 24, 2022, when Joshua Danehower entered his bedroom and shot him 10 times next to his wife. Danehower did this because he was obsessed with Glyer’s wife, with whom he had gone on one date a decade before. He had a murder dossier titled “the plan,” acquired a lock-pick set and a gun, and then carried out his plan.

Descano’s office made sure Danehower would not serve prison time. Descano negotiated an insanity plea. After five years in a psychiatric hospital, the murderer will be released if the state decides he is now sane.

“The insanity defense is used in less than 1% of criminal cases and is successful only about 25% of the time,” noted the website Liberty Unyielding.

“But Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano has let 11 killers avoid conviction by accepting their plea of ‘Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity.’ ”

That’s one out of every five killers in the county. “So killers are 100 times more likely to avoid a conviction by claiming to be insane in Fairfax County than they would be in the rest of America.

The week after Danehower was let off the hook, Abdul Jalloh allegedly stabbed Stephanie Minter to death at a bus stop.

Jalloh had 30 arrests on his record at the time, but every charge of a violent crime, Descano dropped, setting him free to kill.

THE PERVERTED POSTER BOY OF GENDER IDEOLOGY

Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) brands herself as a pragmatic moderate. Descano has no such pretensions.

As governor, Spanberger is the leader of the state party. She could prove her moderate bonafides by leaning on Descano to reform, or more likely to drum him out of the party — turn donors and party officials against Descano’s all-but-certain future runs for higher office, and encourage him to return to private practice.