VP Harris, Husband Donated to ‘Defund Police’ Group in 2023: Report
Vice President Kamala Harris, already under fire from former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, for her "radically leftist views," is now embroiled in a new controversy following a report on Tuesday.
The Washington Examiner, citing documents, revealed that Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, donated to a far-left organization advocating for police defunding in Washington, D.C., and transforming the capital into a "sanctuary" for illegal immigrants.
“Legal Aid DC, a nonprofit in the district focusing on housing law and representing low-income clients in various areas, received a $1,000 donation from Harris and Emhoff in 2023,” according to a copy of their joint tax return. “In 2021, the couple also directed $1,000 to Legal Aid DC,” the outlet reported after reviewing financial disclosures.
These donations come as Harris faces heightened scrutiny on the 2024 campaign trail, especially regarding her 2020 stance on defunding the police and her management of the border crisis. Despite shifting her stance on several progressive issues since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, her recent contributions to Legal Aid DC could prompt questions about her ties to controversial progressive activists. This scrutiny is compounded by her selection of Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate, who has faced backlash for his handling of the 2020 riots in Minnesota.
Founded in 1932, Legal Aid DC describes itself as “the district’s oldest and largest civil legal services organization,” aiming to “make justice real in individual and systemic ways.” In 2020, following George Floyd’s death, Legal Aid DC’s project coordinator Adam Jacobs released a statement on their website, expressing solidarity with those “speaking out, demonstrating, and demanding a country and society that will treat every one of its residents with dignity and respect.”
Shortly thereafter, in June 2020, Amanda Korber, a housing law attorney for Legal Aid DC, was quoted in an article advocating for fewer police officers in the district. Legal Aid DC shared the article on social media, highlighting Korber’s concern: “As Legal Aid’s Amanda Korber noted in the article, we are concerned, especially given the ongoing protest movement, about any solution that involves more police and policing in DC public housing. #BlackLivesMatterDC.”
Furthermore, in 2021, Legal Aid DC shared an article on social media praising the Black Lives Matter movement, featuring a quote from Minneapolis City Councilman Jeremiah Ellison, who said, “I think the police will view a leftist protester with a gas mask as more dangerous than a right-wing protester with a semiautomatic rifle.”
Ellison, the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, led an unsuccessful effort in 2020 to “dismantle” the Minneapolis Police Department.
Additionally, Legal Aid DC supported a law in the district, which has since been approved, to establish it as a “permanent” sanctuary city. This legislation limited cooperation between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local agencies. Jacobs, the project coordinator, stated at the time that the law “could lift some of the terror our immigrant neighbors and their families have faced for many years.”
“It also restricts the city’s prisons from functioning as immigration detention centers and amends a loophole used by ICE and the U.S. Marshals to detain immigrants outside of D.C. Superior Court,” NBC4 Washington reported in 2020 after the city council made permanent a previously temporary law.
On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee pointed out that Walz, Harris’s running mate, has supported “sanctuary state” policies and a law allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Both Harris and Walz used their first joint campaign appearance on Tuesday night to advocate for banning AR-15s and other rifles categorized by Democrats as “assault weapons.”