Before serving as Joe Biden's surrogate for the past four years, Kamala Harris held positions as a California attorney general and senator. Often, scandal and failures followed him.
As California's attorney general, Harris was widely criticized for failing assume fiscal misconduct. In fact, his office was “called out” by judges for “defending convictions obtained by local prosecutors” who had inserted false confessions, lied under oath and withheld evidence. A federal appeals judge even admonished officials in 2015 to talk to Harris “and make sure he understands the seriousness of the situation” involving prosecutorial misconduct.
Similarly, Harris' top deputy was accused of sexually harassing an employee while working for Harris at the California Department of Justice. cost the state $400,000 to solve the case.
Now, as vice president, Harris' office has not only been plagued by staffing issues, but the vice president is under scrutiny for her role as “border czar” leading the Biden administration's efforts to resolve the crisis border Early in his term, Biden appointed Harris to address immigration challenges at the border after he initially rolled back several of his predecessor's initiatives.
Harris came under fire after she was unable to visit the border for months after taking the assignment. When he finally showed up in El Paso, tens of thousands of people had crossed into the United States illegally, many of them violent criminals and gang members.
“Serving as our nation's border czar, Vice President Harris has overseen the worst unmitigated border security crisis of our lifetime. The data is irrefutable,” said Mark Morgan, former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Just the news.
“He fully supported the dismantling of the web of tools, authorities and policies we had in place under the Trump administration that had led to the most secure border in our lifetime and has repeatedly lied to the American people about the loss of the government's operational control of our own borders,” Morgan continued.
“Under his reign, more Americans have died from fentanyl being dumped at the border; more potential national security threats and criminals have sought to exploit our open warrant policies; and more illegal aliens during his tenure than at any other time in our nation's history. His performance has negatively impacted every aspect of our country's safety and national security and can only be described as a total failure. “, added.
In fact, NewsNation reported Monday that Harris he was unable to speak with the new head of the Border Patrol after he took office last year. Earlier this year, former Chief Raul Ruiz said he also had never heard from Biden or Harris during their tenure. “I've never had a conversation with the president or the vice president about this. I was the head of the Border Patrol. I commanded 21,000 people. That's a problem.” Ortiz continued 60 minutes.
At the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, Harris visited Central America and asked immigrants not to make the trip to the United States. “At the same time, I want to be clear to people in this region who are thinking about making this dangerous trek to the U.S.-Mexico border: Don't come. Don't come,” Harris said at the time.
However, little progress was made after the visit. In fact, the opposite happened: millions of illegal immigrants continued to enter the United States over the past three and a half years. The Federal Reserve estimates that 3.8 million new illegal aliens could enter the country in 2024 aloneif current crossing rates continue.
Kamala Harris' campaign did not respond to a request for comment Just the news.
“You know, with Kamala Harris, you know, what has she done as a border? What has she done? Nothing. And I think her record speaks for itself,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, RS.C John Solomon reports Monday podcast.
Harris' past public service in California reveals a pattern of scandal and failure that will come to the fore if Harris replaces President Joe Biden at the head of the Democratic ticket. Biden announced his decision to drop out of the race during the weekend and Harris backed up to replace it on the X social media platform.
During her tenure as California attorney general, Harris was reprimanded by judges after her office tried to defend a conviction obtained by local prosecutors, who had inserted a false confession in a 1995 murder case. The defendant, a housekeeper of the murdered couple, was charged but never confessed.
When the defendant appealed the conviction on the grounds that prosecutors presented false evidence, Harris' state office challenged the appeal to uphold the conviction, which earned the judge a reprimand. The the judge criticized Harris by asking his deputy, Kevin Vienna, if his office wanted to defend the conviction “obtained by lying prosecutors,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
In December 2018, during Harris' first term as a US senator from California, one of their former staff members resigned after the Sacramento Bee asked Harris' office about a $400,000 sexual-harassment settlement dating back to his tenure as attorney general. Larry Wallace, who was the director of the Law Enforcement Division under Harris in California, joined her senate office after she was elected.
Harris claimed in a media statement at the time that he was unaware of Wallace's behavior, but the timing of the incident was inconvenient for the senator, at the height of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment. she was part of a distinguished group of senators who called for the resignation of Senator Al Franken after he was embroiled in a harassment scandal. she had separately introduced a bill that year to ban forced confidentiality agreements in harassment lawsuits.
Before becoming California's attorney general, Harris served two terms as San Francisco's district attorney. In this role, a single mistake (failing to check the background of a lab technician)affected 1,700 cases. But facing scrutiny over the incident, Harris tried to distance himself from the setback and let his staff take the hit.
In 2010, a judge admonished then-prosecutor Harris' office for violating the defendants' rights when he failed to notify them of a police drug technician who admitted to skimming cocaine from evidence stored in his lab. The judge said the failure of Harris' office to notify the defendants of this information violated a “constitutional duty.” After identifying the technician's illegal behavior, prosecutors were forced to drop more than 600 drug casesin accordance with SFGATE.
Again, Harris tried to walk away from the mistake. Speaking to the press, Harris said at the time that “contrary to public perception, I do not run the crime lab.” His efforts to distance himself from the scandal were unsuccessful, however, because he admitted that his office did not conduct a background check about the technician, instead of relying on the police to be forthcoming with this information. A background check would have revealed the technician's prior conviction in a domestic violence case, information that prosecutors are constitutionally required to provide to a defendant.
Nor were Harris' campaigns free of scandal. When he first ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2003, an ethics board found he violated campaign finance laws, resulting in one of the largest fines in the city history, according to SFGATE. Harris broke the $211,000 voluntary spending cap after he promised voters he would stick to it.
In short, the city's ethics commission found that Harris committed the violation and fined his campaign $34,000, though they ruled it appeared to be unintentional. Harris took full responsibility for the “mistakes” and promised to take responsibility for them. Her opponents, however, found it difficult to believe that the violations were not intentional and criticized her for being “sloppy”.
Later in 2006, Harris passed scrutiny during his campaign for attorney general after he refused to return donations from a disgraced fundraiser after accusing his Republican opponent of doing something similar. Harris accepted and kept donations from Norman Hsu, a Democratic fundraiser and fugitive for 15 years on auto theft charges. Hsu had also contributed to other Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, who promptly returned the funds.
In 2019, Harris donations accepted of the firm that defended Jeffrey Epstein a decade earlier in his Florida sex abuse case. Senator Harris, who was running for president at the time, had criticized the firm's work earlier in the day, saying its work on the case called “the integrity of our legal system into question.”
The failures have followed the senator until the vice presidency. In addition to the struggle to address the border crisis, reports emerged after Harris became Joe Biden's vice president that his office was dysfunctional and suffering from poor communications. Politician he reported in June 2021, only about six months after the start of his term.
“People are thrown under the bus from the top, there are short fuses and it's an abusive environment,” said a person with direct knowledge of how Harris' office is run. in accordance with Politician. “It's not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It's not a place where people feel supported, but a place where people feel treated as if…”.
The reported dysfunction points to a larger problem facing Harris' offices during his 18 years in public service: high turnover. According to Washington, DC-based conservative watchdog Open the Books, Harris had a 92 percent turnover rate in her first three years as vice president.
“In the most recent publication Until March 31only four of the original 47 personnel listed aa Government Report 2021 He continued to work steadily and is among the 50 current members of the office staff,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open the Books. wrote in a post on Substack based on your organization's findings.
The instability of Harris' vice presidential office was a factor considered by Biden and his advisers as they prepared for the president to abandon his re-election bid. His office management style was reportedly part of a strained relationship between his office and the West Wing. axes reported.
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