Harris has been a master revisionist of her record on crime, healthcare, and other issues.
Tulsi Gabbard called her on it during one of the early debates while Harris was taking the lead. After the debate, Harri had zero momentum.
TULSI GABBARD’S ALLEGATIONS ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) “put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” said Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) at the beginning of her assault on Harris. Gabbard told her Harris owed the men who suffered under her reign an apology.
Harris had gone after Biden for his record on crime, glorifying her own, but Tulsi wouldn’t let her get away with it. She painted her as a drug warrior and a bad cop.
Harris says she’s proud of her record, “but I am deeply concerned about this record,” said Gabbard. “There are too many examples to cite, but…she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. And she fought to keep cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”
Joe Biden isn’t the only one being attacked tonight. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard didn’t hold back when she took on Sen. Kamala Harris’ criminal justice record. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/7eZE6v6ZHW
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 1, 2019
KAMALA HARRIS’ RECORD AS AN ATTORNEY GENERAL
Gabbard referenced these issues.
Harris fought to keep people, even the innocent, in prison. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. The presidential candidate resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings.
As a piece from Lara Bazelon in the New York Times details, Harris was far from the “progressive prosecutor” that she has tried to rebrand herself as in recent days.
Not a Progressive
As one example, when Harris was San Francisco’s district attorney in 2010, she was condemned by a judge for staying silent about a police laboratory technician who had been accused of stealing drugs and “intentionally sabotaging” her work. She never warned the defense attorneys.
In 2014, she refused to take a position on Proposition 47 — a voter-approved measure that reduced some low-level felonies to misdemeanors. That same year, she laughed when a reporter asked her if she would support the legalization of medical marijuana. In fact, she isn’t on record reversing her opinion on marijuana and supporting legalization until just last year.
Also in 2014, the California attorney general’s office (during her tenure as attorney general) opposed the release of nonviolent inmates on the grounds that “prisons would lose an important labor pool.”
In 2015, she actually “opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving officers,” according to Bazelon, who added that Harris had also “refused to support statewide standards regulating the use of body-worn cameras by police officers.”
Elizabeth Nolan Brown, in a piece for Reason, listed some of the times that Harris was found arguing in favor of convictions that any reasonable person might be concerned had been wrongfully decided.
Harris also pushed to uphold a 28-year-to-life sentence for a man named Daniel Larsen for possession of a concealed weapon, despite the fact that, as Bazelon writes, “there was compelling evidence of his innocence” and “his trial lawyer was incompetent.”
Kevin Cooper was an inmate on death row whose trial had been influenced, Bazelon writes, “by racism and corruption.” Harris initially opposed his bid to prove his innocence through DNA testing, relenting only after his case too went viral.
Progressives would like Harris since she will do whatever they want.