A well-known conservative legal organization has launched several investigations into Vice President Kamala Harris’s time as a prosecutor and attorney general in California, as she embarks on her presidential campaign, which emphasizes her “tough on crime” stance.
“From incarcerating parents whose children frequently missed school to endorsing a bail fund that released violent Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, Harris’s criminal justice record is under new examination,” Fox News reported recently, citing the investigations initiated by America First Legal (AFL). The organization claims Harris “has proven to be the most radically progressive Vice President in American history. Much of her tough on crime reputation stems from her actions as San Francisco DA, where she prosecuted individuals for marijuana use and other minor offenses,” stated Dan Epstein, president of AFL, to Fox News Digital. “Our investigation, however, reveals that Kamala Harris does not adhere to many statutes passed by legislatures, including the Federal United States Congress, as well as the state of California.”
AFL is scrutinizing Vice President Kamala Harris through public records requests to the California Attorney General’s Office. The investigation encompasses several issues, such as non-compliance with federal donor privacy laws, failure to enforce federal immigration laws, inadequate pursuit of equal justice, lack of disclosure of conflicts of interest, failure to address evidence of misconduct, the nature of investigations by the California Fair Practices Commission, and potential cover-up of misconduct evidence, according to Fox. “These probes focus on her disregard for the rule of law and bending it for political objectives,” Epstein told the outlet. “We also examine potential ethics issues and failures to disclose conflicts of interest, allowing her staff as attorney general to engage in fraud without proper oversight.”
During her early legal career, Harris had a relationship with California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who is believed to have helped her secure influential roles on the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission. AFL is now investigating whether Harris received improper political favoritism and whether she properly recused herself or disclosed any conflicts of interest, the report stated. Fox added:
During her 2020 presidential campaign, launched in January 2019, Harris faced significant criticism over her prosecutorial record. Critics argue that tough-on-crime prosecutions disproportionately affect low-income families and minorities, further entrenching them in the prison system. One of the most criticized aspects of Harris’s record was her handling of school truancy cases. Harris supported a truancy law, passed in 2011, that allowed district attorneys to charge parents with a misdemeanor if their children were chronically absent without a valid reason.
In 2019, Molly Redden of HuffPost explored the impact of the truancy program on families in her article, “The Human Costs of Kamala Harris’s War on Truancy.” One affected individual was Cheree Peoples, an African American mother arrested in April 2013 after her child missed 20 days of school.
Later, Harris distanced herself from the truancy crackdown in a 2019 podcast, stating it “never was the intention” to criminalize parents and describing the California law as one with “unintended consequences,” according to Politico. She also faced criticism for being overly harsh on low-level drug offenders during her tenure as San Francisco’s district attorney and later as the state’s attorney general. Liberal critics argued that her policies contributed to the mass incarceration of Black men rather than emphasizing rehabilitation and criminal justice reform.
In June 2020, Harris supported a bail fund that assisted Black Lives Matter protesters in getting released from jail. However, only a small portion of the over $41 million raised went toward bailing out those arrested during the riots, reports said. According to Fox, the fundraising site remained active and accepting donations as recently as a week ago.
“It’s evident that there is a consensus that Trump’s conviction is politically motivated,” Epstein said. “And if the standard for Kamala Harris is that the process leading to Donald Trump’s conviction is just and one she follows, then logically, it means that she is a political prosecutor, not a fair, honest broker.”