The Story Behind the “Story” of Kamala Harris and Steve Mnuchin
The following is the result of my deep(ish) dive into the false narrative of, “she didn't indict Steve Mnuchin cuz he bribed her”:
Here we have this white bro David Dayden, who does not have journalist credentials but instead has made his living as a writer for far left propaganda publications, writing for the Intercept. He obviously doesn’t even contact Harris’ office for this story (because, again, he’s not an actual journalist), gets NO independent corroboration for any of his claims, yet his hack POS article gets repeated by all the other white bros (who are also not actual journalists) and picked up by other publications to the point where this same Dayden hack propaganda piece is essentially a firewall against finding ANY other story about her written by an actual journalist or analyst on the subject when you do a google search, but the piece is referred to under different names, so it looks like a bunch of different independently corroborated accounts. However, they all just circle back to this Dayden piece:
Case in point: notorious bro blogger Ryan Cooper writing for the week, (who never had a sexist opinion against women leaders that he wasn’t willing to trot out) quoting that same David Dayden Intercept shit piece:
Some daily Kos article that isn’t even attributed to anyone (though it shows up at the top of a google search) quoting that same David Dayen Intercept propaganda piece:
This article is written by some young white guy named Jesse Mechanic who has no credentials whatsoever, and just quotes- YOU GUESSED IT! The same David Dayden Intercept article! Yet it’s still somehow one of the first results when you do a google search using any iteration of “kamala Harris/Steve Mnuchin”:
Oh look! Another David Dayden article that quotes from his own Intercept article. We still have yet to uncover a result on google search that isn’t just the same repurposed David Dayden propaganda piece:
Another very young white guy named Sylvan Lane with not much experience in journalism at all who just repurposes the David Dayden Intercept article, and yet somehow he gets amplified:
Oh look! It’s CNN! I mean, it’s another young white bro, but it’s CNN! That’s a big news network. Surely this white guy did his own original investigative research and didn’t just…oh. Oops. There’s that same fucking Intercept article again:
Oh god. Here’s that ridiculous Jacobin article by well-known, “Hillary is worse than Donald Trump!” New Zealand (need I say it? White guy) misogynist, Branco Marcetic: Jacobin is not real news, and I don’t even know if it also links to the Dayden Intercept article because WHO FUCKING CARES WHAT THIS SEXIST HACK HAS TO SAY ABOUT ANYTHING. nonetheless, this POS article pops up before any real ones:
Here’s a piece of pure propaganda that only links to the David Dayden Intercept story (of course), and tries to make a shady connection between a $2,000 campaign donation and the “lack of indictment”. The “writer” of the story is Llewelyn Hinkes-Jones, another young white guy who writes for the not-credible propaganda rag, Jacobin:
And I’m not going to even link to her Wikipedia page, but the section on her “not indicting Mnuchin” only cites…you guessed it! that hack David Dayden Intercept article and also Sylvan Lane (whose article just in turn cites David Dayden).
Oh! Look! A GQ article! Written by…another young white guy named Luke Perry (who tried to, “both sides! It’s complicated! I’m objective!” The recent MAGA teens impromptu white pride rally, btw). He doesn’t actually link to the Intercept article!!! Oh. Except… he still says that she “has baggage” and “shouldn’t get a free pass.” So…sexist dog whistling there, Luke. Too bad. You almost stood out just for your sheer lack of reposting David Dayden:
Okay. So now after trying really hard to overcome the propaganda firewall of the Intercept and the merry band of sexist white guys recycling it over and over again, we finally find an actual real piece of journalism written by two reputable and credentialed journalists! (Incidentally, at least one of whom is not a white guy), showing that she backtracked out of an initial bailout deal because the banks wanted too much legal protection, and held out until they paid 18.4 BILLION back. Despite the hack, sexist Jacobin writer who tried to claim that a 2k donation was steep enough to exclude Mnuchin from the consequences of someone who went after 18.4 billion, when we see actual research and journalism, we start to see through the propaganda bullshit:
Here’s another Reuter’s story corroborating how Harris went after the biggest foreclosure offenders, written also by a real journalist who, just also so happens to not be a young, inexperienced, lacking-in-credentials white blogger guy who just got handed a spot writing at Jacobin because he worships Bernie. I imagine that unlike those guys, this journalist had to actually earn his career:
Oh, look. You have to be willing enough to do actual research (which these douchebag Intercept and Jacobin dudebros are not, and neither are their douchebag “what he said” white dudebro men just reposting for HuffPo and the other cheap click bait machines), but if you want to slog around in an actual government report, you see that she got an additional 2 billion (in addition to 18.4) in direct assistance to CA victims of home foreclosure:
She also authored the ENTIRE fucking CA Homeowner’s Bill of Rights, making the dual tracking practice illegal, which was how OneWest (SteveMnuchin) was cheating homeowners in the first place:
The fact is that Mnuchin- the CEO of OneWest, didn’t have evidence against him for a criminal indictment. There were some *civil* claims potentially recommended against him in a grand total of only 8 cases. Only 8. So, not the “thousands” that these hack writers are trying to claim. Eight. And those eight cases were looked into by Harris’ team of prosecutors for months. Winning them (again, only in civil court, not criminal charges), rested on some untested legal theories and potential major jurisdictional issues. In the end, the AG office has limited resources and decided those resources were better spent on bigger cases affecting more people and criminal charges. In other words, it’s a blatant propaganda lie that she “didn’t indict Mnuchin”:
Despite how utterly blatant this propaganda against her on this one issue alone is, and despite how many dozens of white men who shaped the anti-Clinton narrative in the media were called out on their misogyny and sexual harassment, we continue to not scrutinize these lacking-in-credentials sexist men at all or why their constant shitty, sexist, unresearched hot takes against proven women leaders continue to dominate the media. Nor do we scrutinize why we are so quick to believe those men without question and line up right behind them to call yet another good female candidate, “corrupt” and “untrustworthy” based on no real evidence whatsoever. Just our bias that women who seek promotions and positions of power have to be inherently corrupt.
