Soros Prosecutor Elected To Drop Charges. 1 Year Later, Suspect Charged With Murder.

By Harold Hutchison

A man arrested for a shooting in Northern Virginia in 2025 was charged with second-degree murder a year after multiple felony charges against him were dropped by Arlington County’s chief prosecutor, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti.

Malachi Rawlings was charged with six felonies, including “aggravated malicious wounding” and “use of a machine gun for an aggressive purpose,” for the Jan. 1, 2025, incident in a Ballston apartment building where police found him in possession of an illegally modified pistol. But even though he admitted to that Ballston shooting, multiple felony charges were dropped. After receiving “deferred adjudication” for those charges, he was arrested by police in Washington, D.C., and charged with second-degree murder. (RELATED: Blue State AG Ignores 20 Years Of Supreme Court Rulings While Defending Semi-Auto Ban)

“Pursuant to a DC Superior Court arrest warrant, members of the Capitol Area Regional Fugitive Task Force located and arrested 23-year-old Malachi Rawlings of Southeast, D.C. Rawlings was charged with Second Degree Murder While Armed,” the Metropolitan Police Department said in an Aug. 2 release. A 30-year-old woman was found unconscious and suffering from gunshot wounds on May 12.

Man who admitted to Ballston shooting in 2025 is arrested on murder charge in D.C. https://t.co/6P6QAXGRVC

— ARLnow (@ARLnowDOTcom) August 28, 2026

The six felonies Rawlings was charged with in state court over the January 2025 shooting could have led to a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison, with the maximum sentence being life without parole plus up to 49 years, ARLNow.com reported in March 2025. But multiple felony charges were dropped, even though Rawlings had been “previously charged with firearm offenses in D.C. in 2022 and early 2024, according to Metropolitan Police Department press releases,” meaning he was an obvious danger to public safety.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s RightSideofLegal.org website warns that having a machine-gun conversion device, like a Glock switch, without registration and authorization from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) can lead to ten years in federal prison and up to a $250,000 in fines.

Arlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti — whose office dropped most charges against Rawlings — received nearly $1 million in donations from political action committees funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros, according to campaign finance records.

“I have used my lobbying power as a prosecutor to push for gun [control] laws,” Dehghani-Tafti told Jejune Magazine in a 2023 interview as she was running for a second term. “In a second term, I will continue to support our legislators in advocating for an assault weapons ban, and work with stakeholders to implement a gun buyback program.”

Dehghani-Tafti also declared her intention to enforce the ban on modern semiautomatic firearms signed into law by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger in May before the legislation was placed on hold by courts pending the Supreme Court’s decision in Viramontes v. Cook County, which challenges a similar bill from a Chicago-area locality.

“Yes, we plan to prosecute cases under the assault weapons ban if they are brought to us by the police,” Dehghani-Tafti told ARLnow.com in July.