Debunking The Lies, Smears, and Distortions about Kamala Harris
Senator Kamala Harris has been the subject of a years-long disinformation, misinformation, smear campaign aiming to undercut her character, integrity, and distinguished tenure as a public servant for decades. As loathe as I am to address these distortions and smears, the pervasiveness of the misinformation demands a response. Here you will find an encyclopedia of responses to the just about every lie, smear, distortion, and petty critique of Kamala Harris for President. To be clear, if something happens to be missing that does not mean it is true, it just means it hasn’t made it the Disinformation Hall of Shame yet.
A few things to keep in mind when evaluating the merits of any claim:
The San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General positions are executive roles. That means that as DA or AG, Kamala Harris would not have been personally involved in the day to day assignments of every staff member and case.
Kamala Harris made history as the first woman, first Black person, and first South Asian person elected as San Francisco District Attorney (2004–2010) and the first Black woman elected as DA in the state of California. She was the executive leader of over 300 staff consisting of prosecutors, victim advocates, paralegals, and other support staff with an operating budget of over $30 million. Under her tenure, the office contained four major divisions: the Criminal Division, the Investigations Bureau, the Special Operations Division, and the Victim Services Division. With the criminal division alone filing over 20,000 cases (8,000 felony and 12,000 misdemeanors) a year compared to an average of 66,000 violent, property and larceny theft crimes a year, Kamala would not have been personally involved in every court proceeding or charging decision.
Kamala Harris made history again as the first woman, first Black person, and first South Asian person elected as California Attorney General. As the executive leader of the California Department of Justice (largest state DOJ), she had a staff over 4,800 (1,000+ attorneys) and an operating budget of over $750 million. Under Harris’ leadership she re-organized the CA Department of Justice into 4 divisions (resource allocation in parenthesis): Legal Services (35%), Division of Law Enforcement (22%), Calif. Justice Information Services (23%), Directorate and Administration (20%). The Civil Law and Criminal Law division caseloads averaged 20,000–30,000, so obviously Kamala Harris would not have been personally involved in every or most court filings.
There is far more to Senator Kamala Harris’ decades of public service than the false claims that will be addressed below. For those interested in more extensive deep dives into her ACTUAL record and not the talking point distortions being fed here are some suggested readings:
50 Times Kamala Harris Advocated for or Accomplished Criminal Justice Reform
Claim: Kamala pushed a law that forces schools to turn undocumented students over to ICE
The Real: Kamala Harris has consistently been a supporter of sanctuary status and a champion for immigrant rights. The false claim arises from a change in how undocumented youth arrested for felonies were reported to ICE. Kamala Harris was not responsible for nor did she push for then Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2008 unilateral decision to modify his policy to include reporting undocumented youth charged with felonies to ICE. Previously the policy only applied to undocumented adults.
Newsom changed the policy in response to reporting that San Francisco had been footing the bill and illegally flying Honduran youth accused of dealing drugs back to their home country as well as sending them to other parts of the state. The statement that writers have taken out of context to inaccurately use as evidence Harris pushed for a change was a statement in response to the scandal over the illegal flights. Harris stated, “While detained juveniles are under the custody and control of the juvenile probation office and the court every city agency needs to work together to balance our obligations under federal law and the sanctuary ordinance to solve crimes and put the offenders behind bars.” The statement was made prior to Newsom’s policy change and from the contemporaneous reporting it is clear that the policy was not a collaborative change.
A fact checker wrongly accused Kamala Harris of being untruthful when she said that the change by Newsom had unintended consequences, but in fact the elected Public Defender Jeff Adachi made a similarly statement that the policy resulted in unintended effects when discussing it a year after it was implemented. Adachi stated “When this policy was put into place, the intent was to deal with what was then identified as a specific problem with Honduran youth,” Adachi said. “But we’re seeing this policy affecting youth who have lived most of their lives in San Francisco, are in school and make a mistake.”
Claim: There are multiple variations of the false claims levied at Kamala Harris over the Kevin Cooper case such as: withheld DNA evidence to keep a man on death row; denied DNA testing to exonerate a man on death row; kept a man on death row despite DNA testing that exonerated him.
The Real: Kamala Harris played no role whatsoever in the Kevin Cooper case for several reasons: 1) Convicted of four murder counts in 1983, Cooper had exhausted all of his court appeals in November 2009 which was prior to Harris taking office as AG; 2) Cooper’s only recourse left was clemency which is solely within the Governor’s powers.
Governor Schwarzenegger first denied Cooper clemency in 2004 then again in 2010. Cooper requested clemency from Governor Brown in 2016 which was not granted. Governor Brown issued an order for new DNA testing in December 2018 shortly before leaving office. Governor Newsom expanded the testing in February 2019. Testing is still ongoing so claims that Cooper has already been exonerated and was held in prison despite of it are false.
Claim: There are many smears and distortions about Kamala Harris’ anti-truancy record including: false claims about laughing about putting parents in jail if their kids missed school; locking up parents; targeting poor families and people of color
The Real: Truancy has been a prosecutable offense in California since 1977. Kamala Harris made the decision to tackle the elementary school truancy crisis in San Francisco after discovering that 94% of homicide victims were high school drop outs. Tackling truancy was not about punishing or prosecuting parents (which was a rarely used last resort), it was about providing parents resources needed to get their children in school.
Kamala Harris did not lock parents up. A widely circulated HuffPost Editorial painting Harris as a truancy zealot contains many distortions about her record on this issue. The most egregious distortion is using a woman by the name of Cheree Peoples as a horror story of Harris’ doing when her case was a result of a local Orange County program. More details debunking the article can be found here. Kamala Harris achieved success in lowering truancy in San Francisco by 20% during her tenure. As AG, Harris created the Bureau of Children’s Justice which formed private/public partnerships to increase resources available to educators and parents to reduce truancy.
Claim: There are various versions of the false claims that Kamala Harris: blocked the release of prisoners; kept prisoners locked up for cheap prison labor; kept prisoners locked up for slave labor; refused to address prison overcrowding; kept prisoners locked up to fight fires for cheap.
The Real: The false claim arises around one specific court filing by one of the 1,000 attorneys (Patrick McKinney) working for the CA DOJ . The role of the CA AG office is to represent various state agencies in litigation and in this case the state agency was the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The court rejected McKinney’s filing on behalf of the CDCR, therefore prisoners were not in fact kept locked up despite earning 2 for 1 good time credits. Kamala Harris was not involved in the court filing nor aware of the filing prior to a news report. With over 20,000 cases per year in the Civil Law division alone (resulting in exponentially more court filings) it would not have been customary for the Attorney General to be involved in a case that only required the expertise of a mid level Deputy AG III that was several levels of management below the Harris’ level.
Claim: Oversaw a state prosecutor falsifying a confession to get a life sentence and then destroyed the evidence
The Real: This claim is in reference to wrongdoing by Deputy District Attorney Robert Murray of Kern County. The Attorney General oversees 4,500 employees including over 1,000 lawyers, but the AG does not supervise local District Attorneys and their deputies. In 2013, prior to trial during plea discussions, ADA Murray admitted to falsifying a translated transcript in the case of Efrain Velasco Palacios who faced 5 counts of lewd and lascivious acts against the 10 year old daughter of his live-in girlfriend. Palacios was facing 8 years for the 5 counts and was not charged with a crime that faced a life sentence. Superior Court Judge Staley threw the case out due to Murray’s misconduct and Palacios’ attorney being removed from the case for allegedly saying his client did not have a viable defense. The judge’s decision was appealed, arguing that Palacios could still get a fair trial with a new counsel. The judge’s decision was upheld on appeal. In 2015, Efrain Velasco Palacios plead no contest to lew or lascivious acts and unlawful intercourse with a 13 year old girl and was sentenced to 4 years in prison.