Harris Under Investigations By Legal Group Over Her Tenure As Prosecutor
A prominent conservative legal organization has initiated multiple investigations into Vice President Kamala Harris' tenure as a prosecutor and attorney general in California. This scrutiny comes as Harris launches her presidential campaign, partly claiming to have been “tough on crime.”
“From locking up parents whose children had chronically missed school to supporting a bail fund that let violent Black Lives Matter rioters out of jail in 2020, Harris’ approach to criminal justice is facing fresh scrutiny,” reported Fox News, referencing the new probe by America First Legal (AFL). The group contends that Harris “has proven to be the most radically progressive Vice President in American history.”
Dan Epstein, president of AFL, told Fox News Digital, “A lot of her tough-on-crime reputation goes to her prosecution when she was San Francisco DA, individuals who use marijuana and other sorts of things. Our investigation, however, makes it very clear that Kamala Harris does not believe much in terms of statutes passed by legislatures, including the Federal United States, Congress, as well as the state of California.”
AFL is examining Harris through public records requests to the California Attorney General’s Office. The investigation covers 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-ups of misconduct evidence, as reported by Fox.
Epstein explained, “And so those are really our probes of her not following the rule of law and bending it for a political objective. We also probe numerous kinds of potential ethics issues and failures to disclose conflicts of interest, allowing her own staff as attorney general to engage in fraud and not kind of overseeing that.”
Early in her career, Harris had a romantic relationship with California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who reportedly helped her secure influential positions at 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 adequately recused herself or disclosed any conflicts of interest.
Fox further detailed:
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’ record was her handling of school truancy cases. Harris supported a 2011 truancy law that allowed district attorneys to charge parents with a misdemeanor if their children were chronically absent without a valid reason.
Molly Redden of HuffPost examined the impact of this truancy program in her 2019 article, “The Human Costs of Kamala Harris’ War on Truancy.” She highlighted cases like that of 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, saying it “never was the intention” to criminalize parents and describing the law as one with “unintended consequences,” according to Politico.
Harris also faced criticism for her harsh stance on low-level drug offenders during her tenure as San Francisco’s district attorney and later as California’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 promoted a bail fund that helped release Black Lives Matter rioters from jail, although only a fraction of the more than $41 million raised went towards this cause. Fox reported that, as of last week, the site was still active and collecting donations.
“It’s fairly clear that nobody disagrees, nobody disagrees that Trump is a felon because of political prosecution,” Epstein stated. “And if the standard for Kamala Harris is that the process that led to Donald Trump being convicted is one of justice and one that she follows, then logically, it means that she is a political prosecutor, not a fair honest broker.”