Soros DA Accused Of Hiding ‘Secret Meetings’ In Push To Indict Austin Cop

(Screenshot via Travis County Democrats/DA Garza)

José Garza, a Soros-backed Austin prosecutor who ran on a platform of “delivering real justice for all,” may soon get a taste of his own medicine if a Texas law firm’s case against him pans out.

Garza, the progressive district attorney for Travis County, has been chasing a criminal conviction against Austin Police Officer Chance Bretches for nearly four years relating to a 2020 incident in which some protesters sustained injuries. Now law firm O’Connell West, representing Bretches, is alleging that Garza held “secret meetings” with officials to pressure the city of Austin into accepting responsibility in the incident — without informing the parties involved. According to the firm, the DA only filed new charges against Bretches after failing to secure an indictment against the city.

The Austin Police Department issued expired bean bag ammunition amid Black Lives Matter protests in Austin following the death of George Floyd, according to court documents released by O’Connell West. The use of those rounds allegedly caused “severe injury” to at least one individual, leading to responding officer Chance Bretches’ indictment alongside 18 other involved officers. Bretches was initially charged with two counts of aggravated assault in May 2022 and re-indicted for two counts of aggravated assault, deadly conduct, and assault in March 2024.

Bretches’ attorneys allege that Garza met with city officials in 2023 to negotiate an indictment against the city of Austin in exchange for dropping charges against Bretches. Crucially, the firm claims that Garza’s office never informed the defense of these meetings and certified to the court that all information had been exchanged between the parties. As a result, O’Connell West claims there is “probable cause” to believe that several members of Garza’s office tampered with evidence.

Garza’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Attorney Doug O’Connell told the DCNF the issue  the firm is raising in the case is that Garza’s office “knew the police department was criminally responsible for the expired, hardened bean bag shotgun” issued to officers. “The elected DA here in Travis County, Texas ran on a platform of targeting and prosecuting police officers,” O’Connell stated. “He is a George Soros-funded official who takes orders from the Wren Collective.”

Garza was elected as the Travis County DA during the 2020 election cycle and took office in January 2021, shortly indicting 19 police officers for their actions during the May 2020 protests. The prosecutor reported over $548,000 in political contributions between Feb. 23 and July 4, 2020, much of which came from the Texas branch of Soros’ national Justice & Public Safety PAC. Soros is the committee’s top backer, contributing $3,480,863 in 2020 — including $652,000 between March 11 and May 29, the window of time during which political action committees were required to file contribution reports in the state of Texas during the 2020 election season.

The prosecutor’s office also entered a non-disclosure agreement with The Wren Collective in 2022, according to the 2025 report “Outsourcing Justice” produced by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. The report states that the agreement was signed by Wren Collective founder Jessica Brand and Travis County’s First Assistant District Attorney Trudy Strassburger.

The Wren Collective has worked to support 40 progressive prosecutors through pro-bono “communications” work since 2022. According to its website, the organization “works to transform America’s approach to public safety, expose the weaponization of the legal system, and ensure every person has the chance to participate in civic society.” The Wren Collective is fiscally supported by Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE), a leftist organization sponsor that received over $6 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations between 2020 and 2023.

When reached for comment, the Open Society Foundations stated that the organization “has not provided any financial support to the Wren Collective,” adding, “They are not a grantee.” SEE and The Wren Collective did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

The Austin Police Retired Officers Association (APROA) and the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) called for Garza’s resignation following O’Connell West’s accusations. Executive director of CLEAT Robert Leonard wrote, “If DA Garza has any shred of integrity left, he will resign immediately.”

Leonard told the DCNF that Garza “made it abundantly clear” during his campaign that he would use the office to target police officers.

“I think DA Garza made it abundantly clear when he ran for office that his promise to his constituency — the people that supported him, including the Soros foundation that financially backed his campaign — was that he was going to go after police officers, he was going to go after law enforcement, and that he was going to do whatever he had to fulfill that campaign promise,” he said.

APROA President Dennis Farris posted the statement to X, writing that Garza’s “habitual misconduct” and “lack of prosecutorial experience puts our entire community at risk.”

Farris told the DCNF he believed Garza did “the right thing” by not prosecuting the officers who shot and killed a terrorist after the early March 2026 attack in Austin. “If he can look at this shooting and see that it’s clearly justified, he should be able to look at every other police shooting and do the same thing,” he said, “because there was no more investigation into this police shooting in two days than there is in any other one.”

Strassburger sent an email with the subject line “Looking for Civil Rights Prosecutor” shortly after Garza took office searching for candidates “looking to prosecute police officers,” which Farris says “should tell you everything.”

“This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s the totality of everything if you go back and look at everything, the missteps this office has made in the last five years, and the fact that this community is not safe because of those missteps,” Farris said.

“We gotta do something before it goes so far that it can’t be fixed.”