WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) launched seven separate inquiries into Vice President Kamala Harris’ roles in the California government from 1990 to 2017.
Time and time again, Kamala Harris has proven to be the most radically progressive Vice President in American history. Harris has a long history of promoting a far-left agenda, including support for abolishing ICE, abolishing fracking, defunding the police, and providing free healthcare to illegal aliens. Harris has long been a radical leftist, even dating back to her time in state government.
Accordingly, AFL has launched a multi-front investigation into Kamala Harris to uncover records and communications regarding the following activities during her time serving in the State of California’s government:
1. Failure to Comply with Federal Law Protecting Donor Privacy
During Kamala Harris’ tenure as Attorney General, the State of California required organizations soliciting charitable contributions to file copies of their federal IRS Form 990 tax forms. These forms include a list of all donors who contributed at least $5000 to the charity in a given year. The Supreme Court, in AFP v. Bonta, held that such mandatory disclosures violated the First Amendment.
That case, however, did not involve a federal statute that governed Kamala Harris’ fishing expedition against groups she ideologically opposed. 26 U.S.C. 6103(p)(8)(A) of the Internal Revenue Code orders that “no return or return information shall be disclosed after December 31, 1978, to any officer or employee of any State which requires a taxpayer to attach to, or include in, any State tax return a copy of any portion of his Federal return, or information reflected on such Federal return, unless such State adopts provisions of law which protect the confidentiality of the copy of the Federal return (or portion thereof) attached to, or the Federal return information reflected on such State tax return.”
AFL is concerned that Kamala Harris sought donor information about her political enemies without complying with federal law designed to protect donor privacy.
2. Failure to Enforce Federal Immigration Laws
As California Attorney General, Kamala Harris interfered with the enforcement of federal immigration laws—even defending San Francisco’s sanctuary-city ordinance and opposing California’s participation in the federal Secure Communities program (a program that enabled ICE to deport criminal aliens from local communities).
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Harris stated, “What needs to be looked at . . . is comprehensive immigration reform . . . Immigration policy in our country has to be reformed, and it has to be based on the fact that we have 11 million undocumented in this country—and California has the largest numbers of undocumented, in excess of 2 million people. In California, one in two Californians was born outside the United States or has a parent born outside the U.S.—including myself.”
Beyond Harris’ lax enforcement of immigration laws, “in 2014, Harris agreed to a settlement with Rodney Quine, a litigious transgender prisoner serving a life sentence for murder without the possibility of parole, allowing him to have a costly sex-change operation at taxpayer expense. Quine’s attorneys argued that forcing him to retain the genitals he was born with while in prison violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’” Harris praised the settlement.
AFL is concerned that Kamala Harris, as California’s top cop, failed to enforce immigration laws and used her office to push a political agenda paid for by taxpayers.
3. Failure to Pursue Equal Justice Under the Law
As San Francisco D.A., Kamala Harris did not seek the death penalty for a cop killer. In 2004, during a routine traffic stop, a black gang member, David Hill, gunned down SFPD officer Isaac Espinoza with an AK-47 assault rifle. Investigative details revealed Espinoza, who left behind a wife and young daughter, had no chance to defend himself. The San Francisco Police Officers Association, which had endorsed Harris in 2003, vigorously opposed her decision. In her campaign for D.A., Harris had run as an opponent of capital punishment, contending that it gets applied disproportionately to members of minority groups.
Spurning pleas from Espinoza’s family, she said: “I approach the work of being a prosecutor as the responsibility to do justice. It’s not about the responsibility to lock people up for the maximum amount of time. It is the responsibility to make sure the criminal justice system has integrity.” California Attorney General Bill Lockyer (a far-left progressive) noted that he would have sought a death sentence if he were the D.A. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer publicly disagreed with Harris’ decision. Boxer went so far as to urge that Hill be prosecuted under federal death penalty laws.
Even Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s mayor at the time, said that the case “rattled” his opposition to capital punishment.
Similarly, in 2009, DA Harris announced that she would seek life imprisonment, rather than capital punishment, against Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador and MS-13 gang member who murdered a father and two of his sons in a drive-by shooting the year before (a third son, critically wounded, survived). The victims were returning home from a family picnic when Ramos opened fire, apparently mistaking them for gang rivals.
AFL is concerned that then-Attorney General Kamala Harris failed to do justice when cop killers and gang members were members of minority groups.
4. Failure to Disclose Conflicts of Interest
At the beginning of Kamala Harris’ legal career as a prosecuting attorney in Alameda County, she dated California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Assemblyman Brown helped Harris land politically powerful jobs at the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission.
AFL is concerned that Kamala Harris benefited from political favoritism and is investigating whether Harris properly recused herself or otherwise disclosed conflicts of interest to the appropriate ethical authorities.
Read the inquiries here, here, and here.
5. Failure to Address Evidence of Misconduct
In 2015, California Attorney General Kamala Harris launched a criminal investigation into corruption inside Orange County’s jails. Clear evidence existed that deputy sheriffs in the county had misused informants in a manner that violated the rights of criminal defendants. Four years later, no charges were filed.
AFL is concerned that Harris, as California Attorney General, ignored clear evidence of misconduct over a penal entity under her jurisdiction.
6. Nature of Probes by California Fair Practices Commission
In 2015, the California Fair Political Practices Commission (“FPPC”) determined that former California Attorney General Kamala Harris did not violate state laws when she received gifts from a company owned by San Francisco interior designer Ken Fulk. After the FPPC launched its inquiry, reports revealed that Harris paid Fulk $10,245 for work to her apartment in San Francisco. Harris made three substantial payments to Fulk for his services even though she had yet to receive an invoice. After being contacted by the FPPC, Harris requested an accounting of the amount still owed and made the $10,245 payment. Fulk contributed $5,000 to Harris’ campaigns for attorney general, state elections records show.
AFL is concerned that former Attorney General Harris may have been subject to numerous probes by the California Fair Practices Commission and is committed to ensuring the public is educated about such investigations.
7. Failure to Address, and Potential Cover-up of, Evidence of Misconduct
In The People (of California) v. Efrain Velasco-Palacios, the California Court of Appeal revealed that state prosecutors committed “outrageous government misconduct,” in particular the claim that prosecutors falsified a transcript of a defendant’s confession, which was defended by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Harris appealed the decision dismissing the indictment. According to Harris, only abject physical brutality would warrant a finding of prosecutorial misconduct and the dismissal of an indictment. Harris’ defending misconduct under her watch was not limited to county prosecutors. May 2015 reporting revealed that Brandon Kiel, deputy director of community affairs at the California Department of Justice, and two others — David Henry and Tonette Hayes — faced charges for their roles in the Masonic Fraternal Police Department. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that the Masonic Fraternal Police Department was not a legitimate police force and that Kiel, Henry, and Hayes were arrested for allegedly impersonating police officers.
Perhaps most concerning is Kamala Harris’ failure to act upon a discrimination and retaliation complaint involving Larry Wallace, a longtime Harris aide and one of her closest professional confidantes. A lawsuit by Wallace’s former executive assistant against the Attorney General’s office, which ultimately settled for $400,000, was filed just days before Harris was sworn into the U.S. Senate. Problematically, an intake form from the Equal Employment Rights and Resolution Office, which oversees discrimination investigations and compliance at the Department of Justice, shows that the department was first notified on October 3, 2016, of Danielle Hartley’s intent to pursue legal action.
AFL is concerned that Kamala Harris intentionally ignored or covered up misconduct by prosecutors under her watch as well as her own close political aides.
Statement from Dan Epstein, America First Legal Vice President:
“It is absolutely crucial that the public has access to the facts about Kamala Harris’ time in California government. Each step up the ladder of her career appears marked by improprieties or scandal. America First Legal will aggressively probe her former offices and fight to ensure the truth reaches the American people.” said Dan Epstein.
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Photo Credits: Adobe Stock Images / mehaniq41.
