Arlington County Republican Committee accused Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti of leniency when it was revealed the suspect in a Pentagon City double stabbing that occurred last month, 23-year-old Leonardo Reyes, previously reached a plea deal with her office in 2021 for armed robbery.
Dehghani-Tafti is one of the prosecutors who received significant political backing from an organization tied to the controversial Hungarian-American financier George Soros, and more recently, the prosecutor argued there was “no basis” to disrupt an anti-Israel encampment that formed near the Virginia home of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Reyes was reportedly on probation on December 15, when he allegedly stabbed a toddler and an adult woman in Arlington. The toddler was treated and released after the attack, but the adult woman, identified by police as Iman Gaye, died on December 30, 2024, as a result of the injuries police say she sustained from Reyes.
After Arlington Now reported the criticism of Dehghani-Tafti by the Arlington GOP following the arrest of Reyes, the Republican Party Virginia wrote in a post to the social media platform X, “Every Virginian deserves a prosecutor who will enforce the law and punish violent criminals. Parisa Dehghani-Tafti’s pro-criminal reign of terror has continued for far too long.”
She will be up for reelection in 2027, and the outlet reported the Arlington GOP expects to field a strong candidate.
Dehghani-Tafti (pictured above) was previously able to secure serious financial backing for her campaign, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, which reported she received $652,580 from the Justice and Public Safety PAC during her original 2019 campaign for office. The group was her single largest donor during the political cycle.
According to the political finance tracker OpenSecrets, the Justice and Public Safety PAC’s largest donor in 2019 was Soros, who gave the group more than $1 million that year.
The political action committee claims its “mission is to elect better prosecutors,” who its website states, “have outsize power and largely unchecked authority in the criminal justice system—from charging nonviolent drug offenders with felonies to seeking the death penalty disproportionately based on the race of the victim and defendant.”
In 2021, Dehghani-Tafti partnered with the Vera Institute for Justice, a criminal justice reform group, in a program aimed at decreasing the racial disparity in the criminal justice system by 20 percent.
More recently, Dehghani-Tafti argued last July that “the facts and circumstances” surrounding an anti-Israel encampment erected near Blinken’s home in Arlington did not rise to the point of police action, with the prosecutor reportedly telling local media, “there is no basis in the law to charge the demonstrators.”
The Virginia Department of Transportation ultimately dismantled the encampment, saying it created conditions that made traveling “unsafe for motorists, bikers and pedestrians” and blocked access for police and emergency vehicles.
Before it was dismantled, the encampment reportedly boasted protesters who labeled the Biden-administration official “Bloody Blinken,” accusing him of complicity in “the crime of extermination.”
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Parisa Dehghani-Tafti” by Parisa Dehghani-Tafti. Background Photo “Arlington, Virginia” by MrPanyGoff. CC BY-SA 2.0.
