America First Legal claims Kamala Harris has a history of ‘bending’ the law ‘for a political objective’ as well as ‘failures to disclose conflicts of interest’
Vice President Kamala Harris’ checkered prosecution record during her tenure as California attorney general is resurfacing as her bid for the White House heats up. 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.
America First Legal (AFL), a nonprofit conservative legal watchdog group, launched seven investigations into Harris’ prosecutorial background on Thursday afternoon, 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.”
Through public records requests to the California Attorney General’s Office, AFL is investigating Harris for failure to comply with federal donor privacy laws; failure to enforce federal immigration laws; failure to pursue equal justice; failure to disclose conflicts of interest; failure to address evidence of misconduct; the nature of probes by the California Fair Practices Commission; and potential cover-up of misconduct evidence.
“And so those are really our probes of her not following the rule of law and bending it for a political objective,” Epstein said. “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 dated 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 undue political favoritism and whether she properly recused herself or disclosed conflicts of interest.
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 reported how the truancy program affected some families in her article, “The Human Costs of Kamala Harris’ War on Truancy.” Among those impacted was Cheree Peoples, an African American mother arrested in April 2013 after her child had missed 20 days of school.