In a surprise to us here in Minnesota, our left-wing local media — inspired, or perhaps shamed, by The New York Post — is actually pressing a left-wing county prosecutor for her questionable decision not to charge a six-time Tesla vandal for his politically inspired violence.
Mary Moriarty, elected as Minneapolis’ County Attorney in the wake of the George Floyd riots, is a woke prosecutor in the mold of Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg and San Francisco’s ousted Chesa Boudin.
State government employee Dylan Adams, 33, was caught on video vandalizing six Teslas in late March, as a nationwide campaign of hate-fueled attacks against Elon Musk’s company was in full swing.
He left $21,000 worth of damages, over $10,000 of it to a single car.
But rather than prosecute his half-dozen felonies, or even the most significant one, Moriarty let Adams walk — offering him “diversion” instead of criminal charges.
As the national firestorm over the story grew, local reporters cornered Moriarty at an unrelated public event Wednesday to question her on the Adams case.
Moriarty claimed that “diversion” reduces recidivism and improves public safety.
It “helps to ensure the individual keeps their job” — yes, in this case, his taxpayer-supported job at Minnesota’s Department of Human Services — “and can pay restitution.”
Yet her office’s own published diversion guidelines limit it to property crimes below $5,000.
And now local reporters have learned that, on the same day she announced the Adams diversion, Moriarty charged a 19-year-old woman — with no prior criminal record — with a first-degree felony for keying one car, belonging to a White Castle co-worker, and causing just $7,000 in damages.
To paraphrase: For Moriarty’s Democratic friends, anything; for teenaged fast-food workers, the law.
The report on Moriarty’s hypocrisy was startling in that it came from the reliably leftist Minneapolis Star Tribune, in a story that rehashed the many, many lowlights of Moriarty’s brief career as county prosecutor.
The phrase “soft on crime” doesn’t quite capture her aversion to, you know, actually prosecuting criminals.
Her local reputation is such that the lead prosecutor of neighboring Anoka County, Brad Johnson, made a point of publicly saying that he would have brought criminal charges against Adams, “just so that no one gets any silly ideas in the North Metro from this story.”
And what’s the silly idea that the public would have taken away from this incident?
That it’s “open season” on Teslas, at least in Hennepin County, the state’s most densely populated.
“We try to make [charging] decisions without really looking at the political consequences,” Moriarty told the Star Tribune.
“Can we always predict how a story will be portrayed in the media or what people will say? No.”
But out here in reality, Moriarty’s decision sends an unambiguously political message: Crime will be tolerated in Hennepin County, so long as the criminal is doing it for the correct, leftist-approved reason.
In her view, laws don’t apply to Democrats, or at least to those joining the Democratic cause of violent protest against President Trump and his allies.
“Should we have treated this gentleman differently because it’s a political issue?” Moriarty complained. “We made this decision because it is in the best interest of public safety.”
Or perhaps it’s that a non-Tesla-driving White Castle co-worker makes for a more sympathetic victim than the six owners of pricey vehicles manufactured by the leftists’ enemy du jour, Elon Musk.
Either way, as a general rule, you get more of what you tolerate.
Moriarty is many things, but naïve is not among them.
While her post is officially a nonpartisan one in Minnesota, she is a member of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (just the Democratic Party in the rest of the nation).
She was endorsed by the George Soros-backed state party in her 2022 election campaign and picked up the personal endorsements of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Soros-backed state Attorney General Keith Ellison.
She’s up for re-election in 2026.
The Minneapolis police department, which investigated and arrested Adams for his serial Tesla vandalism, is outraged at her decision.
“The Minneapolis Police Department did its job,” Police Chief Brian O’Hara said. “Any frustration related to the charging decision of the Hennepin County Attorney should be directed solely at her office.”
In an intra-party backstory, Jacob Frey, the DFL mayor of Minneapolis — O’Hara’s boss — endorsed Moriarty’s opponent in 2022.
Frey appointed O’Hara to his job just before Moriarty’s election win.
Perhaps some Democrats have joined with the rest of us in Minnesota when it comes to Moriarty’s actions (and omissions): never surprised, but always disappointed.
Bill Glahn is a policy fellow at the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment.
