The Shady Side Of Kamala Harris

"Are you a politician or does lying just run in your family?" quipped Fried Green Tomatoes author Fannie Flagg. And yes, politics is a shady business. The art of the possible means compromise — sometimes down to your roots. Expecting a virtuous pol is kind of like asking for a hitman without too much blood on their hands. Do you want somebody good or not!?

But will the fourth estate hold a Biden-Harris administration to account? The amount of giggling in Kamala Harris interviews thus far won't win any Pulitzers. But it does speak to her skill playing the political-media two-step, where proximity to power means sources — and big stories that buoy bigger careers. Everybody wins. Except maybe the public. 

Harris does have her critics, though. Many shouted about hypocrisy over Harris' willingness to run alongside Biden after her debate-stage attack on his chummy past with segregationists, despite her somewhat confusing simultaneous declaration, "I do not believe you are a racist." The Los Angeles Times even served some of her own medicine — noting a "tough on crime" past that disproportionately affected African American men. And though she was rated American's most liberal Senator, The New York Times questioned her "progressive prosecutor" bona fides, detailing how she "fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions." They argue, "she's not" who she claims to be. To that end, we're chasing down the shady side of the first female vice president in U.S. history. 

Kamala Harris has been spinning a seemingly apocryphal childhood yarn for years that goes something like this: When she was a toddler in Oakland, Calif., she was separated from her parents at a march. Young Kamala was found, but fussing, and according to Harris' retelling via Elle, her mother asked her, "'Baby what do you want? What do you need?' And I just looked at her and I said, 'Fweedom.'" Harris told versions of this tale in her 2010 book Smart on Crime as well as her 2019 book The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, according to the New York Post. She giggled her way through the anecdote on late-night TV with Jimmy Fallon as well. 

However, observers have pointed out a remarkable similarity to a story that Martin Luther King Jr. told Playboy during the civil rights era. "I will never forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother," King told the mag in 1965 (via Alex Haley). "'What do you want?' the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked at him straight in the eye and answered, 'Fee-dom.'"

While the similarities in the stories can't be ignored, online debunking site Snopes remains undecided on wither it's outright plagiarism, citing how "[Harris] claims to have no direct recollection of the moment," but rather, has simply repeated a story told to her by her mother. 

During Kamala Harris' failed bid for the Democratic nomination in 2019, in which her much-hyped campaign collapsed before the first caucus, she offered up an ambitious "blueprint to overhaul the criminal justice system,” according to Politico. Her sweeping plan called to end federal mandatory minimum prison sentences, do away with both the death penalty and solitary confinement, and for "phasing out for-profit prisons and cash bail."

But Harris' top-of-the-ticket campaign may have imploded, in part, due to her own previous stances on criminal justice. According to The Week, Harris "sometimes" embraced her tough-on-crime record, but perhaps in light of the ascendant Black Lives Matter movement, with its "defund the police" refrain, the former top cop, "seemed ashamed of her own tough record as DA and AG, preferring not to talk about it or to talk around her reputation for harshness." 

Part of the criminal justice system Harris and activists now want changed is one that imprisons minorities at a disproportionate rate for minor drug offenses, according to Human Rights Watch. But as attorney general of California, "Harris oversaw 1,900 convictions for pot offenses," according to Mercury News. She also "fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent," according to Vox, and further defended California's death penalty all while refusing to look into "certain police shootings." This past "haunts" Harris, at least politically, according to the Los Angeles Times. After all, no one put her in prison for dabbling with marijuana.

Speaking of innocence. Imagine being a poor family struggling with bills and truant kids in the tougher corners of sunny but expensive California. Then imagine Attorney General Kamala Harris tossing you in jail on top of it. That happened. Then she lied about doing it.

"I believe a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime, so I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy," Harris said in a 2010 speech. She doubled down in 2011 during her inaugural address as California DA, "So, we are putting parents on notice. If you fail in your responsibility to your kids, we are going to work to make sure you face the full force and consequences of the law."

Harris admits she personally prosecuted 20 families under this policy, according to The Washington Post, but has repeatedly denied anyone went to jail. But that's not exactly true. While no one in San Francisco went inside while Harris was district attorney, she pushed for her anti-truancy policy to go statewide — which it did in 2011. The law called for up to a $2000 fine and a year in prison for parents of kids who missed more than 10% of school days with no excuse. Dozens of families were charged under this law, and though records aren't thorough, at least 7 parents went to jail under Harris' initiative. Her "careful" claims to the contrary were given "two Pinocchios" by The Washington Post.

There is a deviously effective technique in the debate world called the Gish Gallop. It's when you spew so many falsehoods in such rapid succession that your interlocutor is put in the difficult position of either rebutting you endlessly, or actually getting to their own point.

In Kamala Harris' 2020 Vice Presidential debate with Mike Pence, a question came on the topic of delaying Supreme Court justice nominations until after an election. Democrats favored this at the time, so Harris invented an "unsubstantiated" reasoning, according to Factcheck.org (ie, nonexistent), and ironically attributed it to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln faced a similar nomination close to his own election, claimed Harris, "But Honest Abe said it's not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next president of the United States." Historians told the outlet that there's speculation to Lincoln's motive, but that probably wasn't it, and "there is no record of him making a quote that squares with the one Harris described."

Harris has had other deviations from the truth. Politifact keeps a running tally. She claimed to have "sued Exxon Mobil:" false. She fabricated a stat that "the majority of women are minimum wage workers:" false. She accused the Trump administration of "'raiding money' from military service member pensions to pay for the border wall:'" false. She accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of saying birth control methods could be considered "'abortion-inducing drugs:'" false. The list goes on.