A prominent conservative legal organization has initiated multiple investigations into Vice President Kamala Harris’s tenure as a prosecutor and attorney general in California as she begins her presidential campaign, which is primarily based on her reputation for being “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,” Fox News reported last week, citing the newly launched investigation by America First Legal. The group is alleging that Harris “has proven to be the most radically progressive Vice President in American history.”
“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,” Dan Epstein, president of AFL, told Fox News Digital. “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 probing Vice President Kamala Harris through public records requests to the California Attorney General’s Office. The investigation covers several issues, including 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.
“And so those are really our probes of her not following the rule of law and bending it for a political objective,” Epstein told the outlet. “We also probe numerous kind 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 legal career, Harris had a romantic relationship with California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who is believed to have assisted her in securing 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.
During her 2020 presidential campaign, which she launched in January 2019, Harris faced significant criticism over her prosecutorial record. Opponents of tough-on-crime prosecutions argue it disproportionately affects 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 truancy law, passed in 2011, that allowed district attorneys to charge parents with a misdemeanor if their children were chronically absent during the school year without a valid reason.
In 2019, Molly Redden of HuffPost examined the impact of the truancy program on families in her article, “The Human Costs of Kamala Harris’ War on Truancy.” One of those affected was Cheree Peoples, an African American mother who was arrested in April 2013 after her child had missed 20 days of school.
Later, Harris backed off her truancy crackdown in a 2019 podcast, saying it “never was the intention” to criminalize parents and describing the California law as one with “unintended consequences,” Politico reported at then.
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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 was used to assist 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 was still active and accepting donations as recently as a week ago.
“It’s fairly clear that nobody disagrees, nobody disagrees that Trump is a felon because of political prosecution,” Epstein said. “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.”
