PROFILE OF A SOCIOPATH GAMER LAWYER:
By the numbers: Emhoff is 22 years younger
than President Joe Biden, and just 5
years older than Hunter Biden, who once
described his stepmother, Dr. Jill, as a "selfish
silly entitled c—t."
Months After Making Out at State of the Union, Dr. Jill and Kamala's Husband Spotted Leaving SoulCycle Together
Busted?
What happened: First lady Dr. Jill Biden, Ed.D., shocked the world by making out with Vice President Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff, during her own husband's State of the Union address in February. Earlier this week, the political power couple was spotted leaving a SoulCycle class in Georgetown.
Why it matters: According to a Washington Free Beacon analysis, the only reason a straight man would ever go to a SoulCycle class with a female "friend" would be to stare at her butt. We noticed that Doug is walking behind Dr. Jill. Coincidence?
By the numbers: Emhoff is 22 years younger
than President Joe Biden, and just 5
years older than Hunter Biden, who once
described his stepmother, Dr. Jill, as a "selfish
silly entitled c—t."
Crucial context: The Biden family has a long history of marital irregularity.
READ MORE:
Installed (p)Resident Joe Biden loves to make promises secured by the supposed worth of his family name. "I give you my word as a Biden," he said back in March of 2020, "When I'm president, I will lead with science, listen to the experts and heed their advice, and always tell you the truth." Again giving his solemn word before the 2020 mail-in ballot presidential selection, he promised both "to turn division into unity and bring us together," as well as to "be an ally of the light, not the darkness." Just over a week ago, he declared, "My word as a Biden: I've never been more optimistic about America's future than I am today." My goodness, if only Biden's family name possessed more value than that of Benedict Arnold's, we would be blessed with a man in the White House committed to truth, unity, spiritual guidance, and American success. Yet Biden's name is synonymous with none of those things, is it?
Instead, the Biden family name has really stood for only two things: buffoonery and corruption. For fifty years, Joe Biden has managed to hold onto some slice of power in D.C. as a senator, vice president, and Oval Office stooge not because he is renowned for his erudition or virtue but rather because his doltish behavior and venal character make him ideal for others to control. Perhaps no other Washington relic has accomplished so little for the American people over such a prolonged government career or managed to harness those defects for lucrative advancement more successfully than China Joe.
He is known as a serial liar, a "public servant" who has somehow managed to accrue tremendous wealth, a race-baiting opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only, and a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed with criminal cartels and foreign foes. In another era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his country much the same way Benedict Arnold was two and a half centuries ago; in an era when integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness, weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however, he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning in sleaze.
Perhaps when America's Scumbucket-in-Chief gives his "word as a Biden," he is depending upon the solid reputations of notable relatives. Alas, no. His brother James has been repeatedly implicated in allegations of fraud and quid-pro-quo financial schemes leveraging Joe's political office as a means to advance the Biden family's interests and wealth. His daughter Ashley struggles with sex and drug addictions, problems she has attributed in part to her memories of taking showers with her dad at a young age (no wonder Creepy Joe excuses pedophilia and transgender madness so effortlessly). And then there is the "smartest guy" Joe claims to know — his son Hunter — whose illegal drug use; sexual debauchery with prostitutes, employees, and relatives alike; gun crimes; occupation as an undeclared foreign agent; and serially-excused role as the family's point man for turning the powers of Joe's political office into seedy profit are all well known to the American people (even if habitually ignored by the corrupt Department of [in]Justice). In any other family concerned about its reputation for probity and honor, Hunter Biden would have been cast off as some sort of uncontrollable "black sheep." In the Biden herd, though, Hunter blends right in with his unseemly, scuzzy kin. The Biden pedigree is made from rotten stuff — more like a pustule than a bloodline and filled with dreck, mediocrity, selfishness, pusillanimity, and unrepentant sin.
When you stop to consider how shockingly meaningless Joe's "word as a Biden" schtick really is, it actually becomes tempting to consider whether the old, fatuous fraud is ironically — and just this once — telling the American people the truth! Perhaps when he says, "I give you my word as a Biden," he is really saying: "I give you my word as an incestuous pervert who cannot learn to keep my hands off little girls or keep from sniffing and grabbing women against their will; as a shameless liar who distorts everything, including the circumstances of my own wife and daughter's tragic deaths, when those lies induce public sympathy or are otherwise advantageous; as a plagiarist with no original thoughts or accomplishments of my own; as a lifelong racist who has had many friendships with segregationists and race hustlers while lying about having been active in the civil rights movement; as a corrupt politician who has ties to the mob and whose family has profited generously from my public office; and as a traitor to the United States who has repeatedly sold out my country for the benefit of foreign interests in Ukraine, China, and anywhere else I can make a buck."
I guess when you see how long it would take to vomit forth that mouthful of insidious nastiness, using the shorthand, "I give you my word as a Biden," just means that whatever is said next is almost certainly untrue.
Seen from that perspective, Biden's time as installed president makes a lot more sense. When he promised to unite the country by ridding it of petty divisions, what he really meant was that he planned to exacerbate racial animosities to the best of his abilities, rub salt in old wounds to ensure intolerance festers and anguish lingers, and incite hatred among groups of Americans who would otherwise get along. When he promised to "bring us together," he meant that he would promote propaganda reframing the J6 protest for fair elections as an "insurrection" seeking to topple the government and use that laughably fraudulent pretense as an excuse to persecute and imprison his political enemies. When he promised to be "an ally of the light, not the darkness," he meant that he would threaten concerned parents with criminal prosecution should they resist the government's program of sexualizing childhood, encouraging bodily mutilation, brainwashing innocents with "transgender" delusions, and promoting abortion-on-demand.
When he promised to "lead with science," he meant that he would use the unscrutinized declarations of unelected government health bureaucrats with secret political agendas as a sword and shield for imposing a dictatorship of unconstitutional mandates, censorship, ephemeral freedoms, and unjust orders contrary to established law. When he promised to "listen to the experts and heed their advice," he meant that he would further empower an already-out-of-control Deep State to police Americans' thoughts and words for alleged "misinformation" and "hate"; expand the national security surveillance State to spy on Americans' every move; and target for criminal punishment those who nonetheless insist on engaging in "wrongthink." When he promised to "always tell you the truth," he meant that his administration would construct "politically correct" falsehoods, propagate those falsehoods through a willingly compliant and compromised State-aligned news media, vilify dissent as harmful "disinformation," and characterize contrary viewpoints as mere "conspiracy theories."
Finally, when Biden recently claimed that he has "never been more optimistic about America's future," what he meant is that he has given China permission to send spy balloons loaded with explosives across the continent; criminal cartels permission to flood America with illegal aliens; the pharmaceutical companies permission to reap windfall profits from harmful, untested, yet government-mandated products; the World Health Organization and United Nations permission to usurp U.S. sovereignty; the Federal Reserve permission to print money on our way to economic Armageddon; and the World Economic Forum permission to usher in a "great reset" of centralized control and loss of individual liberty. Surely all that carnage is worth a relatively small finder's fee of 10%.
When Commie Joe's statements are viewed in their proper context, he is just a presidential truth-teller. Really. After all, he gives us his word as a Biden!
Image: 10 Tampa Bay via YouTube, CC BY 3.0 (cropped).
Installed (p)Resident Joe Biden loves to make promises secured by the supposed worth of his family name. "I give you my word as a Biden," he said back in March of 2020, "When I'm president, I will lead with science, listen to the experts and heed their advice, and always tell you the truth." Again giving his solemn word before the 2020 mail-in ballot presidential selection, he promised both "to turn division into unity and bring us together," as well as to "be an ally of the light, not the darkness." Just over a week ago, he declared, "My word as a Biden: I've never been more optimistic about America's future than I am today." My goodness, if only Biden's family name possessed more value than that of Benedict Arnold's, we would be blessed with a man in the White House committed to truth, unity, spiritual guidance, and American success. Yet Biden's name is synonymous with none of those things, is it?
Instead, the Biden family name has really stood for only two things: buffoonery and corruption. For fifty years, Joe Biden has managed to hold onto some slice of power in D.C. as a senator, vice president, and Oval Office stooge not because he is renowned for his erudition or virtue but rather because his doltish behavior and venal character make him ideal for others to control. Perhaps no other Washington relic has accomplished so little for the American people over such a prolonged government career or managed to harness those defects for lucrative advancement more successfully than China Joe.
He is known as a serial liar, a "public servant" who has somehow managed to accrue tremendous wealth, a race-baiting opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only, and a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed with criminal cartels and foreign foes. In another era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his country much the same way Benedict Arnold was two and a half centuries ago; in an era when integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness, weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however, he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning in sleaze.
Perhaps when America's Scumbucket-in-Chief gives his "word as a Biden," he is depending upon the solid reputations of notable relatives. Alas, no. His brother James has been repeatedly implicated in allegations of fraud and quid-pro-quo financial schemes leveraging Joe's political office as a means to advance the Biden family's interests and wealth. His daughter Ashley struggles with sex and drug addictions, problems she has attributed in part to her memories of taking showers with her dad at a young age (no wonder Creepy Joe excuses pedophilia and transgender madness so effortlessly). And then there is the "smartest guy" Joe claims to know — his son Hunter — whose illegal drug use; sexual debauchery with prostitutes, employees, and relatives alike; gun crimes; occupation as an undeclared foreign agent; and serially-excused role as the family's point man for turning the powers of Joe's political office into seedy profit are all well known to the American people (even if habitually ignored by the corrupt Department of [in]Justice). In any other family concerned about its reputation for probity and honor, Hunter Biden would have been cast off as some sort of uncontrollable "black sheep." In the Biden herd, though, Hunter blends right in with his unseemly, scuzzy kin. The Biden pedigree is made from rotten stuff — more like a pustule than a bloodline and filled with dreck, mediocrity, selfishness, pusillanimity, and unrepentant sin.
When you stop to consider how shockingly meaningless Joe's "word as a Biden" schtick really is, it actually becomes tempting to consider whether the old, fatuous fraud is ironically — and just this once — telling the American people the truth! Perhaps when he says, "I give you my word as a Biden," he is really saying: "I give you my word as an incestuous pervert who cannot learn to keep my hands off little girls or keep from sniffing and grabbing women against their will; as a shameless liar who distorts everything, including the circumstances of my own wife and daughter's tragic deaths, when those lies induce public sympathy or are otherwise advantageous; as a plagiarist with no original thoughts or accomplishments of my own; as a lifelong racist who has had many friendships with segregationists and race hustlers while lying about having been active in the civil rights movement; as a corrupt politician who has ties to the mob and whose family has profited generously from my public office; and as a traitor to the United States who has repeatedly sold out my country for the benefit of foreign interests in Ukraine, China, and anywhere else I can make a buck."
I guess when you see how long it would take to vomit forth that mouthful of insidious nastiness, using the shorthand, "I give you my word as a Biden," just means that whatever is said next is almost certainly untrue.
Seen from that perspective, Biden's time as installed president makes a lot more sense. When he promised to unite the country by ridding it of petty divisions, what he really meant was that he planned to exacerbate racial animosities to the best of his abilities, rub salt in old wounds to ensure intolerance festers and anguish lingers, and incite hatred among groups of Americans who would otherwise get along. When he promised to "bring us together," he meant that he would promote propaganda reframing the J6 protest for fair elections as an "insurrection" seeking to topple the government and use that laughably fraudulent pretense as an excuse to persecute and imprison his political enemies. When he promised to be "an ally of the light, not the darkness," he meant that he would threaten concerned parents with criminal prosecution should they resist the government's program of sexualizing childhood, encouraging bodily mutilation, brainwashing innocents with "transgender" delusions, and promoting abortion-on-demand.
When he promised to "lead with science," he meant that he would use the unscrutinized declarations of unelected government health bureaucrats with secret political agendas as a sword and shield for imposing a dictatorship of unconstitutional mandates, censorship, ephemeral freedoms, and unjust orders contrary to established law. When he promised to "listen to the experts and heed their advice," he meant that he would further empower an already-out-of-control Deep State to police Americans' thoughts and words for alleged "misinformation" and "hate"; expand the national security surveillance State to spy on Americans' every move; and target for criminal punishment those who nonetheless insist on engaging in "wrongthink." When he promised to "always tell you the truth," he meant that his administration would construct "politically correct" falsehoods, propagate those falsehoods through a willingly compliant and compromised State-aligned news media, vilify dissent as harmful "disinformation," and characterize contrary viewpoints as mere "conspiracy theories."
Finally, when Biden recently claimed that he has "never been more optimistic about America's future," what he meant is that he has given China permission to send spy balloons loaded with explosives across the continent; criminal cartels permission to flood America with illegal aliens; the pharmaceutical companies permission to reap windfall profits from harmful, untested, yet government-mandated products; the World Health Organization and United Nations permission to usurp U.S. sovereignty; the Federal Reserve permission to print money on our way to economic Armageddon; and the World Economic Forum permission to usher in a "great reset" of centralized control and loss of individual liberty. Surely all that carnage is worth a relatively small finder's fee of 10%.
When Commie Joe's statements are viewed in their proper context, he is just a presidential truth-teller. Really. After all, he gives us his word as a Biden!
Image: 10 Tampa Bay via YouTube, CC BY 3.0 (cropped).
19. Why did your office decline to investigate the health supplement fraud cases involving companies your husband’s law firm represented? Did you, as California’s attorney general, ever purposefully decline investigating or prosecuting clients of your husband’s law firm?
45 Questions the Media Should Ask Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will appear in their first joint media interview on Sunday after accepting their party’s nominations this week.
However, unlike President Trump, Biden and Harris have thus far declined to take questions from the media in an open joint press conference where no questions or topics are off-limits.
In the event that such a press availability arises, here are 45 questions the media should ask them. This list is by no means exhaustive.
QUESTIONS FOR JOE BIDEN:
1. Why did members of your family keep getting lucrative business opportunities overseas while you were vice president?
2. How did your brother, Frank, secure $45,000,000 in taxpayer loans from the Obama administration for his Caribbean projects?
3. How did a newly-minted firm employing your other brother, James, receive a $1.5 billion contract to build homes in Iraq despite having no experience in construction or international development?
4. Why did your son Hunter accompany you on your official trip to Beijing in December 2013? What did he do on that trip? Who did he meet with? What should the American public make of the fact that just 10 days after this trip, your son’s boutique private equity firm secured a $1 billion investment deal from the state-owned bank of China (later expanded to $1.5 billion) despite having no prior experience in China, and with this deal, the Chinese government granted your son’s firm a first-of-its-kind arrangement to operate in the the recently formed Shanghai Free-Trade Zone—a perk not granted to any of the large established financial institutions?
5. Should the American public be concerned that your son’s private equity firm partnered with a Chinese government-owned aerospace and defense conglomerate to facilitate the purchase of an American company that produced strategically sensitive dual-use military technology that the Chinese government wanted?
6. Does your “Build Back Better” proposal contain any provisions to ensure that American taxpayer-funded technology is not bought off by Chinese state-backed enterprises working with private equity firms like your son’s?
7. Back in 2000, you voted in favor of giving permanent Normal Trade Relations (NTR) to China. At the time, you said that this would not lead to “the collapse of the American manufacturing economy” because China is “about the size of the Netherlands” and could not possibly become “our major economic competitor.” Furthermore, you predicted that free trade with China would establish “a path toward ever greater political and economic freedom” for the people of China. Do you still stand by these statements today after 3.4 million American jobs have been lost to China and millions of China’s citizens have been imprisoned, surveilled, disappeared, and used as slave labor by an increasingly authoritarian regime enriched by 20 years of record trade imbalances from flagrant trade violations?
8. The People’s Republic of China has a bold plan called “Made in China 2025” to dominate the key technologies of the future in order to overtake the United States militarily and economically. Do you still contend that China is “not competition for us”?
9. Why did you promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to financial special interest groups when research was clear that the deal would make it easier for corporations to move U.S. jobs overseas?
10. Do you believe Xi Jinping kept his promise to Barack Obama to end cyber-espionage against the United States? If not, what are you prepared to do about it?
11. Do you accept that the coronavirus originated in China? Do you think China was honest with the world in its handling of the coronavirus? Are you satisfied with China’s explanations for how it spread? Do you believe their claims about the number of cases and fatalities in China?
12. Do you think China should be held responsible in any way for its handling of the coronavirus? If not, why not? What, if any, repercussions should there be for China in its handling of the coronavirus?
13. Did you suggest investigating Michael Flynn under the Logan Act, as Peter Strzok’s notes suggest?
14. You said in your DNC acceptance speech that America is ready to “do the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism.” What did you do in your 36 years as a U.S. senator and 8 years as vice president to root out systemic racism? Why didn’t it work?
15. You have called for “revolutionary institutional changes.” What does that mean in practice?
16. You have vowed to rescind the Trump tax cuts. Can you think of a single example of a country that recovered from a recession by raising taxes?
QUESTIONS FOR KAMALA HARRIS:
17. Why did you refuse to prosecute even one sexual abuse case involving the Catholic Church in San Francisco when you were attorney general, despite the pleas of victims’ groups?
18. Also, why did your attorney general’s office refuse to release the documents obtained from the San Francisco archdiocese with all the information about priests accused of sexual abuse? Victims’ rights groups have criticized your office for deliberately burying these documents and thereby covering up the crimes and leaving the public unprotected. Why did you do this? The San Francisco district attorney’s office claimed in 2019 that they no longer have these documents in their possession. What happened to them? How can you claim to be a defender of children when you declined to prosecute the abusers of children?
19. Why did your office decline to investigate the health supplement fraud cases involving companies your husband’s law firm represented? Did you, as California’s attorney general, ever purposefully decline investigating or prosecuting clients of your husband’s law firm?
20. You said you believed the women accusing Joe Biden of inappropriate touching. Do you believe Tara Reade? If not, why not? If so, how do you justify supporting him now?
21. You once attacked a judicial nominee on the basis of his membership in the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus, which is the largest fraternal organization in the world and includes among its past and present members many prominent Americans like President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA), and Vince Lombardi. Do you believe that being a member of the Knights of Columbus disqualifies a person from holding public office? Would you refuse to hire someone on the basis of their membership in the Knights of Columbus or any other Catholic organization? In your questioning of this Catholic judicial nominee, you singled out the issue of the Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life. Would you disqualify a job applicant on the basis of their Catholic beliefs, including their beliefs about abortion? Do you believe that being pro-life disqualifies someone from employment?
22. Why did you single out journalist David Daleiden for prosecution for undercover journalism that others do without penalty?
23. Your chief-of-staff, Karine Jean-Pierre, wrote an op-ed last year attacking the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Americans who associate with it, stating “You cannot call yourself a progressive while continuing to associate yourself with an organization like AIPAC that has often been the antithesis of what it means to be progressive.” Do you believe that pro-Israel activism is incompatible with progressive values?
24. The Biden campaign has adopted a version of the Green New Deal that calls for 100 percent renewable electricity generation by 2035. California has adopted similar “green” goals, but now it can’t keep the lights on due to the state’s reliance on wind and solar energy. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newson admitted this week that the Golden State needs a “backup” plan for energy because the current blackouts caused by lack of wind and overcast skies have shown the danger of relying solely on “green” energy. Why would the nation fare any better than sunny breezy California in keeping the lights on if we adopt 100 percent renewable energy?
25. You said in the past that we “need to hold China accountable” for trade violations, but you are against the use of tariffs. How do you intend to hold China accountable? You also said that “we need to export American products, not American jobs.” How do you intend to make sure we don’t export more American jobs to China? How would your policy differ significantly from the same policies that led to the loss of 3.4 million jobs to China?
QUESTIONS FOR BIDEN OR HARRIS:
26. You both supported the George Floyd protests, which you claimed were peaceful. Have you spoken to any victims of the riots — people who lost loved ones or businesses?
27. Do you believe that the looting of the Magnificent Mile in Chicago was a “form of reparations,” as one Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer claimed? Is looting an appropriate form of protest as a means of reparations?
28. Seattle Black Lives Matter protesters stormed a neighborhood last week, demanding that residents “get the f*** out” and “give black people back their homes” as reparations. Do you support that style of protest?
29. If elected, would you object if protesters decided to tear down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square across from the White House? What about statues to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington? Would you be willing to sign a written pledge to protect our national monuments and statues?
30. What is the maximum number of illegal immigrants you would allow into the country before securing the border to stop more from entering?
31. The Obama administration deported an estimated 3 million illegal aliens. Was that a bad thing?
32. With 30 million Americans unemployed due to the coronavirus, would you support a halt on work visas for foreign workers competing with Americans for jobs?
33. Do you still support a ban on fracking? If so, what do you say to the estimated 7.5 million American jobs that will be lost due to such a ban, which includes an estimated 550,000 jobs lost in Pennsylvania, 500,000 jobs lost in Ohio, 363,000 jobs lost in North Carolina, 353,000 jobs lost in Colorado, and 233,000 jobs lost in Michigan?
34. Wall Street has praised the choice of Kamala Harris as VP. Why do you think financial special interests support her so much?
35. Will you be following the advice of your Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors in negotiating with China? If not, whose advice would you seek out in negotiating with China?
36. Do you support China’s actions in Hong Kong?
37. Do you support China’s actions in Xinjiang province where an estimated 3 million predominantly Uyghur Muslims are imprisoned in what the Pentagon has described as “concentration camps”? Are you concerned about the fact that Hunter Biden’s China-backed private equity firm invested heavily in the surveillance technology used to spy on the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province?
38. Do you disagree with how the Trump administration is handling Huawei? Do you think Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou should be extradited to the United States for trial?
39. Do you believe China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of colonialism or is it a good program that Third World nations should sign up for?
40. What are you prepared to do if China invades Taiwan or uses military force to assert its claims in the South China Sea?
41. Do you believe the U.S. should return to the Iran nuclear deal? Would you make further concessions to Iran to secure that? Do you believe the Iranian regime should be allowed to buy weapons again?
42. Are you pleased with the results of the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya?
43. Why did the Islamic State fold up so much more quickly under Trump than the Obama administration predicted?
44. Would you advise Arab nations to follow the UAE’s lead and make peace with Israel, or should they hold out for big concessions to the Palestinians?
45. Should the United States apologize for demanding NATO partners meet their financial commitments? If not, why didn’t the Obama administration ever do that?
Rebecca Mansour is a Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.
Kamala Harris Failed to Investigate Client of Husband’s Law Firm as California Attorney General
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) failed as California’s attorney general declined to investigate faulty advertising claims against one of the nation’s leading nutritional supplement companies, which also happened to be a client of her husband’s law firm.
As California’s chief law enforcement officer between 2011 and 2017, Harris racked up a record as a tough on crime prosecutor. From cracking down on school truancy to opposing marijuana legalization—with more than 1900 people being prosecuted for possession of the drug under her tenure—Harris was California’s self-acknowledged “top cop.”
That record, however, did not extend to clients of Venable LLP, the law firm where Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, was a high-profile partner. Harris, in particular, failed on numerous occasions to investigate the nutritional supplement giant Herbalife. At the time, Herbalife was a high-profile client of Venable, paying the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars for its legal services every year.
One such instance occurred in 2015 when prosecutors from the San Diego-branch of Harris’s attorney general’s office sent her a “lengthy memorandum” expressing the need for an investigation to be opened into Herbalife for fraudulent marketing practices, according to Yahoo News. Even before the memorandum was sent, Herbalife had a long and complicated history in California, at one point even generating nearly one thousand complaints about its marketing practices.
It is unclear if Harris ever saw the memorandum in question as no investigation was ever opened by her office. More notably, shortly after the memorandum was sent by the San Diego prosecutors, Harris appeared at a $1,000-dollar-a-had fundraiser in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Podest Group, which then represented Herbalife as a lobbying client. Later that same year, Emhoff would be promoted to managing director of Venable’s West Coast operations.
This was not the only time that Harris declined to take action against Herbalife. In April 2015, Harris refused to join 14 other state attorneys general in asking Congress to open an investigation into the herbal supplements industry for not appropriately disclosing ingredients in their products. At the time, Herbalife was explicitly mentioned by the attorneys general as one of the companies that warranted further scrutiny.
The revelations are detailed more fully in Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite—a book released earlier this year by Peter Schweizer, a senior contributor at Breitbart News and president of the Government Accountability Institute.
Harris and her husband’s ties to Herbalife come back into view as the California lawmaker has catapulted onto the national scene after being chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate.
The best-case scenario is that she’s a progressive who repeatedly violated her own principles so that she could promote her career. In the worst-case scenario, she’s just another corrupt, rotten, regressive prosecutor.
JESSER HOROWITZ
Unethical conduct plagues legal career of Kamala Harris
Posted on February 27, 2019 in Opinions
On Jan. 2019, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris declared her candidacy for President of the United States of America to great fanfare.
She earned quick praise and frequent comparison to former President Barack Obama. A recent Democratic Party straw poll by the Daily Kos ranked her in the top tier of Presidential candidates, with 27 percent of respondents voicing their support for her candidacy. So far, she has pitched herself to the American people as a strong progressive with a particular passion for criminal justice reform.
Harris has a reasonable chance at winning the Democratic Party nomination. She’s charismatic, smart and very likely to bridge the growing divide within the party between the progressive left and the centrists. If she wins the nomination, she might even defeat Donald Trump in the general election. I understand why some voters in the party have decided to rally around her: She’s a promising alternative for Democrats who want someone progressive like Bernie Sanders but better than he is at speaking to identity politics.
However, I would like to encourage my fellow Democrats to approach Senator Harris with a healthy dose of skepticism. As a prosecutor and California State Attorney General, Harris has engaged in blatantly unethical behavior for her profession and embraced positions that actively hurt her constituents. While this does not necessarily have to be a red line for everyone—and it certainly will not prevent me from voting for her should she win the Democratic nomination—our party should hold Harris’ feet to the fire here. Even more concerning than her past positions is that she refuses to own up to them, portraying herself as a long-time, progressive criminal justice reform activist.
I want to clarify that I have no inherent issues with a prosecutor being elected to the presidency. We need prosecutors; we need people who serve the public good rather than represent the interests of paying clients. However, if your job requires you to make decisions that could potentially ruin people’s lives, the ethical standards should be higher, not lower. If you, like Kamala Harris, decide you want to run for President of the United States, it becomes imperative that the public thoroughly and mercilessly scrutinizes every facet of your political career.
In 2015, law enforcement caught Robert Murray, a prosecutor in Kern County, committing one of the most egregious offenses a prosecutor could perpetrate. Specifically, he falsified a confession transcript that connected the defendant with a far worse crime than that with what he had actually been charged. When the defense demanded a copy of the original tape recording, Murray admitted to his crime but said that it was merely a harmless joke. The judge disagreed. He stated that the court refuses to tolerate such outrageous conduct and dismissed the indictment on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct (Observer, “California Prosecutor Falsified Transcript of Confession,” 03.04.2015).
How does this incident involve Senator Harris? At the time, she was the Attorney General of California. In that capacity, she appealed the indictment. According to Sidney Powell of The Observer, this was the third time she had appealed a prosecutorial misconduct dismissal in less than three months. As of March 2015, Murray was still allowed to work as a prosecutor (Observer, “California Prosecutor Falsified Transcript of Confession,” 03.04.2015).
As Attorney General, Harris has a history of fighting to keep men she knew were innocent in prison and of hiding cases of significant illegal activity conducted by law enforcement. In 1999, Daniel Larsen was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for possession of a concealed weapon. There had been nine witnesses who could testify that Larsen was not guilty, but the court called none of them at the trial because of his incompetent and now disbarred attorney. With the help of the Innocence Project, he was able to prove his innocence, and the court overturned his conviction in 2009.
How does this involve Senator Harris? She challenged his release not because she believed he was guilty—she did not dispute his innocence—but because he hadn’t presented proof of his innocence quickly enough. And so, she fought to keep a man she definitely knew was innocent behind bars for life (NBCLosAngeles, “After 13 Years in Prison, Man Found Innocent of Crime Freed,” 3.20.2013).
In another incident, law enforcement discovered that Deborah Madden had purposely sabotaged the drug results of multiple cases as a technician at a San Francisco crime lab. But even though the highest levels of the district attorney’s office knew about Madden’s unreliability as a drug expert, Kamala Harris and her office hid this information from defense attorneys. Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ultimately ruled that Harris’ office had violated defendants’ rights through this act of prosecutorial misconduct, calling into question the convictions of nearly 40 defendants (SFGate, “Judge rips Harris’ office for hiding problems,” 05.21.2010).
However, perhaps Harris’ most egregious example of immoral conduct happened in 2014. A federal judge ordered that all non-violent second-strike offenders be eligible for parole in California in an action against constitutional prison crowding. Kamala Harris, then the Attorney General of California, disagreed with the decision. She argued in court that by releasing these inmates early, prisons would lose “an important labor pool” (Los Angeles Times, “Federal judges order California to expand prison releases,” 11.14.2014). Despite pitching herself as a lifelong champion for criminal justice reform, Harris had advocated that the need to keep nonviolent offenders as slaves outweighs their constitutional rights. How would the Democratic Party call itself progressive if members threw their support behind someone with such an atrocious record on civil rights issues?
Even worse, Harris has yet to apologize for her actions and in fact has refused to even acknowledge them (Reason.com, “Kamala Harris Hopes You’ll Forget Her Record as a Drug Warrior and Draconian Prosecutor,” 01.31.2019). At a town hall, she responded to a question calling her out on her past actions by answering “I’ve been consistent my whole career,” and then explained how the record supports her claim that she has been progressive on prison reform (CNN Twitter, “I’ve been consistent my whole career,” 01.28.2019).
I won’t delve into her argument because, in my view, it’s irrelevant. When you actively cover up police misconduct, try to keep a man who you know is innocent in prison and refuse to release nonviolent offenders because you need their involuntary labor, you don’t get to reframe your narrative.
Kamala Harris is not owed an audience. She is not entitled to one simply because she wants to be president. We should not give her the benefit of the doubt, because she refuses to even acknowledge her wrongdoings. We don’t have the right to forgive her; that right belongs to all the people she’s wronged over the course of her long career.
For that reason, I ask you not to vote for Kamala Harris in the primary, no matter how attractive a candidate she is or how well she explains away her inconsistent career. It’s possible that her past really won’t have much of an impact on how she’ll be as president, but why should we wait and see? The best-case scenario is that she’s a progressive who repeatedly violated her own principles so that she could promote her career. In the worst-case scenario, she’s just another corrupt, rotten, regressive prosecutor.
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