Republican Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz highlighted an April 2018 video showing his opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, endorsing policies to eliminate cash bail and refusing to prosecute marijuana crimes.
Fetterman called such policies “commonsense” while talking about Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in 2018.
“I really have been enjoying watching Larry Krasner, your new district attorney, take some commonsense approaches, like getting rid of police officers that shouldn’t be testifying, decriminalizing possessions of marijuana, refusing to prosecute those kind of crimes, reducing or eliminating cash bail on a lot of different offenses,” Fetterman said at the time.
FILE: Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
The Oz campaign is keen to draw connections between Fetterman and Krasner as the latter faces a possible impeachment for failing to maintain law and order.
Republican members of the Pennsylvania House announced Wednesday morning that they are filing articles of impeachment against Krasner for failing to enforce the law and allowing crime in Philadelphia to skyrocket.
Krasner said panel leader Rep. John Lawrence and his committee – which includes two Philadelphia Democrats: Rep. Danilo Burgos of Fairhill and Amen Brown of Mill Creek – are wrongly focusing only on his county and not the other 66 in Pennsylvania amid the crime wave.
John Fetterman praised Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in an April 19, 2018, video. (Courtesy: AL DÍA News Media)
Fetterman worked with Krasner to secure the release of Dennis and Lee Horton, two brothers who had been convicted of murder and now work for Fetterman’s campaign.
In a 2018 questionnaire, Fetterman said he was “very excited” about “the progressive criminal justice reform platform” that Krasner was “setting into motion.” Fetterman also slammed “’tough on crime’ policies like ‘stop and frisk’ and cash bail,” in the same questionnaire.
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This combination of file photos shows Democratic Senate candidate Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, left, and Republican Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz. The pair had their one and only debate Tuesday. (AP Photo)
The announcement of a panel seeking to impeach Krasner followed the release of a report earlier in the week from a state House committee that detailed rises in crime and increases in withdrawn and dismissed charges that Republicans have blamed on Krasner’s policies.
The report claimed that — according to a study by the Delaware Valley Intelligence Center examining declinations of narcotics, retail theft, and prostitution arrests from 2016 to 2018 — there was a rise in the percentage of declinations of arrest in all cases “especially in 2018,” Krasner’s first year.
Fox News’ Jessica Chasmar, Kyle Morris, and Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.