THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DANGEROUS CRIMINALS LOVE

Kamala Harris is not who she says she is

When she was DA, Harris' focus was on progressive politics – not seeking the death penalty, even for cop killers, and not seeking the toughest sentences for repeat offenders. I remember a district attorney who talked inordinately about the crimes she would not prosecute.

By Debra Saunders 

 

Israel Hayom

Nov 3, 2024

 

Willie Brown and Kamala Harris in 1994. California power broker Willie Brown made sure that his former girlfriend had a clear path to the U.S. senate in 2016.

Over the many years when I wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle, political insiders had their eye on one local official who, they figured, could be president someday. That person was Gavin Newsom. 

It was not Kamala Harris. Because Newsom, San Francisco's former mayor, had his eye on the governor's mansion, Harris faced no major Democratic competition when she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016. 

That seat became open when then-Sen. Barbara Boxer announced she would not run for re-election. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villariagosa wanted to run for Boxer's seat, but former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown warned him off. Yes, that would be the same Willie Brown whom Harris had dated. Thus, 2016 was a win-win for the California Democrat establishment. Newsom won the governor's office, and Harris could use the Senate as a platform to preach her progressive ideas.

By 2019, Harris was running for the White House. But her candidacy failed to generate steam. She dropped out of the race before she could be humiliated in the 2020 Iowa caucuses, the election season's first vote, and before California primary voters could reject her. Harris, you see, did not have the heft to win a presidential primary in her own ultra-liberal home state. 

But she always had luck in her corner. In 2020, front-runner Joe Biden had said he would pick a female running mate. Yes, like every other politician in America, Harris carried some baggage. Throughout her career, Harris was notorious for high staff turnover in her ranks. Biden apparently didn't care. 

Did she improve? In 2021, former Harris communications director Gil Duran wrote in the San Francisco Examiner,"The only people suffering more than Harris are her staff members, some of whom have already quit their plum positions amid reports of a toxic work environment." If you've been watching CNN of late, you may see Harris as she wants you to see her: a former hard-nosed prosecutor who started out as a data-driven, do-your-homework, moderate Democrat. 

 

  

Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) at a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 1, 2024, and US Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris (R) speaks during a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 31, 2024  

 

I laugh out loud. Tough? Prepared? Moderate? Um, no. Those aren't terms that people who knew Harris would have used to describe her during her time as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general. 

When she was DA, Harris' focus was on progressive politics – not seeking the death penalty, even for cop killers, and not seeking the toughest sentences for repeat offenders. I remember a district attorney who talked inordinately about the crimes she would not prosecute. When Harris ran for president in 2019, she actually told the ACLU she supported spending tax dollars on transgender surgeries and treatments – including for detained migrants and inmates. Since Biden unceremoniously ended his re-election campaign in July and handed his party's nod to his vice president, Harris has boasted that she was the only border-state prosecutor in the race. But that doesn't mean she was good at it. 

To the contrary, as she worked her way up the political ladder, Harris supported decreasing funding for ICE and ending ICE detainers for local law enforcement. Harris has criticized Donald Trump for doing "nothing to fix our broken immigration system" after she, Biden's "point person on immigration," and Biden did nothing to fix that sorry structure. So it should be no surprise that after Biden put the border in his vice president's portfolio, she visited the border once, under pressure.If Harris wins this election, where will she stand on the border? Probably on both sides. Expect her to talk tough on enforcement, but pick a team that doesn't see illegal immigration as a problem deserving of more than lip service. 

When Biden chose Harris to be a running mate, cynics and wags looked at her as his insurance policy. Sure, Biden's verbal stumbles were concerning, and, yes, the commander-in-chief had blustered past the 80-year mark. Before the June debate in which Biden fumbled and stumbled, party biggies thought Biden was a better bet than Harris, who just turned 60. Now, some of the folks who pushed for Harris are wondering if they made a mistake.

 

Originally published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal

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Kamala Harris’ support for bail fund that freed violent criminals shows how ‘tough on crime’ she really is

Post Editorial Board

 

 

New York Post 

Aug. 25, 2024

 

Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a bail fund during the Black Lives Matter riots that ultimately freed people accused of murder, sex assault and other violent crimes. 

 

Kamala Harris wants you to believe she’s tough on crime because she won a San Francisco election to become district attorney, and California elections to serve as attorney general, and actually prosecuted people when that was her whole job.

By this logic, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg must be tough on crime, too.

Far more telling is her support for bailing out the 2020 George Floyd rioters, endorsing a bail fund that put violent repeat offenders back on the streets of Minneapolis.

“Chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota,” she tweeted as the city burned (and as Gov. Tim Walz dithered on the mayor’s request to send in the National Guard).

That endorsement helped the Minnesota Freedom Fund raise $40 million, cash it soon used to release accused murderers, rapists, and thieves. 

In keeping with how Black Lives Matter nonprofits operate, only a tiny fraction of that largesse went to freeing simple protesters.

Among the sketchy recipients of the MFF bail funds:

• Darnika Floyd got out on $100,000 after being accused of stabbing a man who refused to have sex with her; in 2021 she was convicted and sent to prison.

• Christopher Boswell, a convicted rapist, was facing 10 felony counts including attempted rape, sexual assault and kidnapping against two women when he got released on $350,000 bail; those charges were later dropped, but he was convicted last year for heinous felonies committed in 2022

• Bailed out in August 2021 on a domestic abuse charge, George Howard weeks later murdered Luis Martinez Ortiz in a road-rage incident; he pleaded guilty last year.

• MFF bailed out Lionel Timms on charges of violently pummeling a bus rider who refused to give him money; a month later, he was arrested for leaving his victim with a traumatic brain injury. In 2021, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for felony assault.

Despite the MFF’s dismal record, Harris hasn’t deleted her tweet endorsing the bail fund — which means she still stands by it, or at the very least doesn’t dare cross the hard left by deleting it. 

It’s also telling that she picked Walz as her running mate despite his sorry record on crime, and not only during the 2020 riots: In his time as governor, Minnesota’s gone from well below the national average on serious crime to above it.

As on everything else, Kamala Harris hasn’t deigned to announce any actual policies on crime, but every signal she has sent is fresh reason to vote against her.