Vice President Kamala Harris’ checkered prosecution record during her tenure as California’s attorney general is resurfacing as her bid for the White House heats up. From detaining parents whose children were chronically absent from school to supporting a bail fund that freed violent Black Lives Matter rioters from prison in 2020, VP Harris’s approach to criminal justice is facing new scrutiny.
America First Legal (AFL), a nonprofit conservative legal watchdog group, launched a seven-pronged investigation into Harris’s record as a prosecutor on Thursday afternoon, arguing that “Harris has proven to be the most radical progressive vice president in American history.”
“Much of her reputation as being tough on crime comes from her prosecution of marijuana and other drug users during her time as district attorney in San Francisco,” AFL President Dan Epstein told Fox News Digital. “But our research has made it very clear that Kamala Harris doesn’t have much faith in the U.S. federal government, in Congress and in the laws passed by legislative branches, including the state of California.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the presidential campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 22, 2024. (Erin Shaff/Pool via Reuters)
Through a public records request to the California Attorney General’s Office, The AFL is investigating Harris was accused of failing to comply with federal donor privacy laws, failing to enforce federal immigration law, failing to pursue equal justice, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, failing to address evidence of wrongdoing, the nature of an investigation by the California Fair Trade Commission, and potentially concealing evidence of wrongdoing.
“So these are investigations into whether she didn’t follow the rule of law and bent it for political purposes,” Epstein said. “We’re also looking into potential ethics issues, failure to disclose conflicts of interest, and allowing and failing to oversee misconduct by her staff as attorney general.”
Early in her legal career, Harris was acquainted with California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who reportedly helped her secure influential positions on the California Unemployment Insurance Review Board and the California Medicaid Board. The AFL is currently investigating whether Harris received undue political favoritism and whether she properly resigned or disclosed any conflicts of interest.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks alongside President Biden in the White House Rose Garden on July 26, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Harris faced heavy criticism over her record as a prosecutor during the 2020 presidential campaign, which began in January 2019. Opponents of aggressive criminal prosecution argue it disproportionately affects low-income families and minorities, further trapping them in the prison system.
One of the most criticized aspects of Harris’ record has been her handling of school truancy cases, after she supported a 2011 truancy law that allowed district attorneys to bring misdemeanor charges against parents if their children were chronically absent during the school year without a valid excuse.
In 2019, Molly Redden The Huffington Post reported In her article, “The Human Cost of Kamala Harris’ War on School Truancy,” she describes how anti-truancy programs have affected some families, including Cherry Peoples, an African-American mother who was arrested in April 2013 after her child missed 20 days of school.
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Vice President Kamala Harris addresses supporters during a campaign rally at West Allis Central High School on July 23, 2024 in West Allis, Wisconsin. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
Governor Harris later backed down on the truancy crackdown in a 2019 podcast, saying her “it was never my intention to criminalize parents” and that California’s law had “unintended consequences,” Politico reported at the time.
She also Low-level drug offender She served as San Francisco’s district attorney and later the state’s attorney general, and liberal critics argued that her policies led to the mass incarceration of black men, rather than focusing on rehabilitation and criminal justice reform.
But in June 2020, Harris touted a bail fund to help secure bail for Black Lives Matter rioters, though only a fraction of the more than $41 million raised was actually used to release the rioters.
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Meanwhile, some Democrats have framed the showdown between Harris and Trump as “prosecutors versus felons,” in light of former President Trump’s recent trial.
“Clearly no one disputes that Trump became a felon through political prosecution,” Epstein said, “and if the standard for Kamala Harris is that the process by which Donald Trump was convicted was based on justice and that she followed it, then the logic goes that she is a political prosecutor, not a fair and honest intermediary.”
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Fox News Digital’s Stephanie Price contributed to this report.
