WHO IS KAMALA HARRIS?

Kamala Harris is not only barely articulate…

How can a country of 350,000,000 manage to find someone as a replacement presidential nominee who is even less articulate than her predecessor? A man with advanced dementia

How did she get to the top?

Extremely disturbing details about how Kamala Harris, as California's top prosecutor, failed to prosecute a single case of child s*xual abuse by pedophiles.

Her office went even further by hiding the records documenting these s*x crimes against children.

Not one pedophile was prosecuted by Kamala Harris.

Mel Gibson

Harris Protected Pedophile Priests When She Was DA

KAMALA HARRIS PULLED OUT ALL THE STOPS IN PROTECTING CATHOLIC PEDOPHILES.

February 17, 2019

Kamala Harris covered-up a massive pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church when she was District Attorney for San Fransisco.

According to an investigation by SF Weekly, Harris repeatedly protected files containing details of how the church dealt with pedophile priests, preventing journalists from viewing them.

Sfweekly.com reports: SF Weekly’s attempts to obtain her office’s files on Catholic clergy abuse under the state Public Records Act suggest Harris favors concealment over transparency.

The records at issue may contain answers to a question of great public concern that has consumed international headlines during recent weeks: What did senior Catholic officials know, and what did they do behind the scenes, while priests accused of molesting children were shielded from punishment?

Cardinal William Levada was archbishop of San Francisco until 2005. He is now a top Vatican official and the Holy See’s most prominent defender of Pope Benedict XVI against allegations that the pontiff has failed to adequately deal with pedophile priests. In San Francisco, Levada was known as a key architect of the church’s practice of keeping abuse allegations secret, protecting abusive priests, and punishing church whistleblowers.

Portions of this record came to light in stories by then–SF Weekly staff writer Ron Russell in 2005 and in a May 5 story in The New York Times that recounted elements of Russell’s reporting. By sifting through documents made public as a result of lawsuits, Russell learned that during the 1990s and 2000s, Levada helped keep allegations against pedophile priests shrouded in secrecy. Alleged abusers included Salesian Brother Salvatore Billante, who police alleged had sexual relations with at least 24 children, but charges were dropped after the California Supreme Court overturned a state law extending the statute of limitations for pedophiles. And so the full contents of archdiocese clergy abuse files obtained by prosecutors were never revealed at trial.

Relatively unscathed by his San Francisco legacy, now-Cardinal Levada is the chief Vatican official charged with responding to global allegations of clergy abuse.

“Given Levada’s current role overseeing pedophile priests and cover-up cases across the globe,” said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), “it is more important than ever that parents and citizens and Catholics learn exactly what he did in San Francisco.”

District Attorney Kamala Harris possesses San Francisco Archdiocese files containing details of how the church dealt with pedophile priests that go back as far as 80 years.

But Harris, the frontrunner in the June primary elections to become the Democratic candidate for California attorney general, has for five years rebuffed reporters’ efforts to view those files, despite statements by former DA Terence Hallinan saying they should be released.

For the past six weeks, SF Weekly has asked Harris’ office to comply with the request under the California Public Records Act. It has released nothing.

A prosecutor must be careful not to release records that might undermine an investigation, unfairly malign the innocent, or expose victims to publicity they don’t want. But in this case Harris’ office seems to be going beyond these important principles to a blanket policy of secrecy.

It’s worth recalling that Harris was recently lambasted by a judge for hiding the extent of an evidence-handling scandal at the San Francisco Police Department crime lab, and for ignoring her constitutional obligation to turn over to defense attorneys the criminal histories of police testifying at trial.

Did Harris merely misinterpret the law? Or does she have a penchant for secrecy?

On April 21, just as controversy was heating up over the Vatican’s role in the global sex abuse scandal, Harris’ deputy, Paul Henderson, responded to my request by stating that Harris’ investigative files were not subject to California’s government transparency laws; her office essentially enjoys a blanket secrecy privilege.

I sent Henderson’s arguments to California Newspaper Publishers Association legal counsel Jim Ewert. “That’s flatly untrue,” he said. The District Attorney’s office “can release them if they want to. But they have decided not to.”

I wrote to Harris’ office citing Ewert’s analysis. Harris’ spokeswoman, Erica Derryck, changed course, saying they would retrieve and review the files to determine whether there were any I could view. Following half a dozen phone conversations and as many e-mail exchanges, Derryck said she would contact me on May 24, but I didn’t hear from her. When I e-mailed and called her again, almost seven weeks after my initial request, she said she was still working on it. I have heard nothing more.

In lieu of releasing records, Harris’ office ended up releasing a statement: “District Attorney Harris focuses her efforts on putting child molesters in prison. We’re not interested in selling out our victims to look good in the paper. When this case was brought under Terence Hallinan, prosecutors took the utmost care to protect the identity and dignity of the victims. That was the right thing to do then and it’s the right thing to do now.”

This sort of statement drives abuse victims crazy. Joelle Casteix, western regional director of SNAP, was sexually abused as a child by a lay teacher at a Catholic school. She had to sue to obtain records pertaining to the incidents. She rejects Harris’ rationale for keeping archdiocese abuse records secret. It’s possible, even routine, to release records about pedophile priests while protecting the names of victims, Casteix explained.

“That’s one of the most dangerous statements I’ve ever heard,” she said. “The number one thing that gets predators off the street is transparency about predators. You can do that by releasing documents, and you can redact victims’ names at the same time.”

Joey Piscitelli, SNAP’s northwest regional director, was more adamant in denouncing Harris’ logic. “They’re full of shit. You can quote me on that,” he said. “They’re not protecting the victims. They’re protecting Levada.”

Hallinan, who forced the archdiocese to turn over the records in 2002, and who pursued cases against priests before his office was barred from proceeding by expired statutes of limitations, sees no reason to keep the files secret: “Obviously, those things should be made public,” he said in an interview.

Rick Simons, who has represented victims in clergy abuse cases, said Harris is notorious for refusing to respond to public records requests. He added that her office has refused to release records even of investigations into priests who have already been tried, convicted, jailed, and released.

Other district attorneys, such as Alameda County’s Nancy O’Malley, have been far more forthcoming, particularly when it comes to exposing clergy who abuse children. Simons said that Harris’ penchant for secrecy “shows a pattern and practice and policy of ignoring the rights of children by one of the largest institutions of the city and county of San Francisco, and in the Bay Area.”

Kam Kuwata, campaign consultant to Los Angeles District Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, who faces Harris in the Democratic primary, said his boss also regards the matter differently. “We see no reason why transparency and protecting the victim cannot work hand in hand,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Harris has employed troubling logic to argue for keeping the archdiocese abuse files secret. In 2005, Russell also asked for the records. A Harris spokesman responded at the time by saying, “If we did it for you, we would have to do it for everybody. Where do you stop, and where do you start?”

California law is clear where you start: with the presumption that the people’s business is public.

On March 27, Levada published an unusual 2,500-word essay on the Holy See’s website, denouncing The New York Times for publishing clergy abuse stories he claimed did not sufficiently highlight the church’s purported zeal in rooting out predatory priests.

“In 2002, I was appointed (at the time as Archbishop of San Francisco) to a team of four bishops to seek approval of the Holy See for the ‘Essential Norms’ that the American Bishops developed to allow us to deal with abuse questions,” Levada wrote. “We found in Cardinal Ratzinger [the future Pope Benedict XVI], and in the experts he assigned to meet with us, a sympathetic understanding of the problems we faced as American bishops.”

To people who have closely followed Levada’s career, it seemed bizarre that he would mention his 2002 role in devising national Catholic clergy-abuse policies.

For help in this task, Levada enlisted his longtime ally, San Mateo cleric Father Gregory Ingels.

According to Russell’s SF Weekly investigation, in 1996 Levada learned Ingels had been accused of sodomizing a 15-year-old boy. Yet Levada helped Ingels’ career flourish, and supported Ingels’ role as a top church policymaker even after learning of a second serious allegation of sexual abuse.

In Marin County, prosecutors assembled a sex abuse case against Ingels, using information drawn from the archdiocese files. But Ingels’ case was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired. Ultimately, the church agreed to settle one of the complaints by paying an alleged victim $2.7 million — and, in the process, sealing records similar to the ones Harris controls.

Nobody paid Harris to conceal the church’s child abuse history, however. Rather, she simply seems to view secrecy as the path of least resistance, whether or not it’s consistent with the public interest.

From a Catholic publication

Reporter Matt Smith at San Francisco Weekly reported in 2010 that Harris rebuffed reporters’ efforts for five years to view her office’s files on Catholic clergy sex abuse under the state Public Records Act, despite statements by former San Francisco DA Terence Hallinan saying they should be released.

The files in question involve the San Francisco Archdiocese files on clergy abuse, and contain details of how the church dealt internally with alleged pederast, homosexual and pedophile priests going back as far as 80 years, according to a second SF Weekly article. Cardinal William Levada was archbishop of San Francisco until 2005.

Not only that…

Kamala Harris’ office has had a staggering 91.5 percent turnover rate since she became vice president, an investigation from government watchdog organization Open The Books (OTB) revealed on Monday. Of the 47 staff members hired when Harris took office in 2021, only four reportedly remained in her employment as of March 2024. 

https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/23/92-percent-of-kamala-harris-staff-left-in-her-first-three-years-as-vp/

Can Kamala Harris Wipe the Blood Off Her Hands?

While the likely Democratic nominee does not have Joe Biden’s 50-year history of support for Israeli militarism, her record indicates she would maintain a staunch pro-Israel policy.

JEREMY SCAHILL

Within hours of Joe Biden announcing he would not seek reelection, the Democratic Party’s power elite began consolidating their support for Vice President Kamala Harris to head the ticket to defeat Donald Trump. Among Harris’s challenges if she secures the Democratic nomination will be to win back support from voters outraged at the Biden administration’s facilitation of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians of Gaza. In the critical state of Michigan alone—where a devastating poll from the Detroit Free Press on Sunday morning showed Biden down 7 percentage points to Trump across the state—there were over 100,000 “uncommitted” primary voters.

Notably, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, Abdullah Hammoud, did not immediately come out in favor of Harris. Instead, he posted, “Dems have an opportunity to be bold this convention. To nominate a candidate who can usher historic policy domestically AND abandon the genocidal course charted in Gaza and beyond. America needs a candidate who can inspire voters to come out to the ballot box this November.”

Harris is in an unusual historical position. The White House press team has promoted an image of Harris as more sympathetic to the humanitarian plight of Palestinians even while she backs Biden’s agenda in the region. As a candidate for president, she could explain to voters ways in which she may have internally dissented in the discussions surrounding the Gaza war. As the sitting vice president, however, such moves would cause problems for Biden. 

The truth is that, like most Democrats, Harris has supported Biden’s policies, even if she has raised tactical objections or expressed moral unease with the horrifying death toll. While Harris is not Biden—and does not have a half century of overwhelming support for Israel’s brutality and militarism fueling her positions—she does have her own record of hardline support for Israel, both as a senator and as vice president. 

Soon after being elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris earned a reputation as an ardent defender of Israel. She spoke two years in a row at AIPAC conferences and co-sponsored legislation aimed at undermining a United Nations resolution condemning Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian land. One of her first international trips as a senator was to Israel where she met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017. “I support the United States’ commitment to provide Israel with $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade,” Harris told an AIPAC conference that year. “I believe the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable, and we can never let anyone drive a wedge between us. … As long as I’m a United States senator, I will do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel’s security and right to self-defense.”

Harris has compared building support for Israel to the coalitions forged during the U.S. civil rights movement and embraced President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states that circumvented demands for an independent Palestinian state. Harris co-sponsored legislation that called the agreements a “historic achievement.” In a 2016 interview Harris charged, “The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is based on the mistaken assumption that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” She added, “the BDS movement seeks to weaken Israel, but it will only isolate the nation and steer Israelis against prerequisite compromises for peace.”

At a private AIPAC conference in 2018, Harris was asked why she is so adamant in her support for Israel. “It is just something that has always been a part of me,” Harris said. “I don’t know when it started, it’s almost like saying when did you first realize you loved your family, or love your country, it just was always there. It was always there.” 

 “Her support for Israel is central to who she is,” Harris’s campaign communications director, Lily Adams, said in 2019 when Harris was running for the Democratic nomination. 

In March 2019, amid calls from Democratic Party activists to boycott that year’s AIPAC conference, Harris joined other candidates including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in skipping the gathering. Instead, she tweeted that she had met privately with “California AIPAC leaders to discuss the need for a strong U.S.-Israel alliance, the right of Israel to defend itself, and my commitment to combat anti-Semitism in our country and around the world.”

While Harris generally speaks in favor of Palestinian self-determination and a two-state solution—in line with broader Democratic Party policy positions since the 1993 Oslo Accord—she has simultaneously opposed efforts to impose consequences on Israel for its flagrant violations of international laws. 

Harris set a tone for her posture on Israel as a senator when she co-sponsored legislation in 2017 condemning former President Barack Obama’s decision to abstain from vetoing a UN Security Council Resolution critical of Israel. The resolution, which was adopted in December 2016, stated that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.” Harris and her senate colleagues charged that Obama’s refusal to block the UN resolution was “inconsistent with long-standing United States policy.” They said U.S. policy should be aimed at preventing the UN from actions that “further isolate Israel through economic or other boycotts or any other measures” and urged future administrations “to uphold the practice of vetoing all United Nations Security Council resolutions that recognize unilateral Palestinian actions including declaration of a Palestinian state or dictate terms and a timeline for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“I believe that when any organization delegitimizes Israel, we must stand up and speak out for Israel to be treated equally,” Harris later said of her vote. 

During the 2020 presidential race, the New York Times asked Harris if she thought Israel meets international standards of human rights. “Overall, yes,” she replied. 

In Harris’s first call with Netanyahu after becoming vice president, on March 3, 2021, she told the Israeli leader that the U.S. was opposed to the International Criminal Court investigating alleged Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians. Harris and Netanyahu “noted their respective governments’ opposition to the International Criminal Court’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel,” according to a White House readout of the call.

Harris, October 7, and the Genocide in Gaza

After the October 7 Hamas-led attacks in Israel, Harris adopted a public position that rhetorically diverged from Joe Biden’s. While advocating for U.S. military, financial, and diplomatic support for Israel’s war, Harris frequently emphasized that Israel must follow the laws of war, protect civilian lives, and allow the delivery of humanitarian aid. In comparison to Biden, Harris more frequently highlighted the suffering of Palestinian civilians. “Israel, without any question, has a right to defend itself. That being said, it is very important that there be no conflation between Hamas and the Palestinians,” Harris told CBS’s “60 Minutes” on October 29, 2023. “The Palestinians deserve equal measures of safety and security, self-determination and dignity, and we have been very clear that the rules of war must be adhered to and that there be humanitarian aid that flows.”

In late 2023, people close to Harris began leaking to the media that the vice president had been pressing Biden to become “tougher” in his stance on Netanyahu and for the administration to be more public in its expressions of concern over Palestinian civilian deaths. At times, Biden and other senior officials did publicly criticize “indiscriminate” Israeli bombings and issued calls for Israel to show more restraint in its tactics. By early 2024, it became apparent that the Biden administration recognized that its support for Israel’s war was likely going to cause major challenges to the re-election campaign. It launched a series of meetings with Arab American leaders in an effort to attempt to stanch the bleeding and began empowering senior U.S. officials to become more outspoken about the plight of Palestinian civilians, though always accompanied by an assertion that Israel had a right to defend itself.

On March 3, after months of massive Israeli bombardment of the Strip and more than 30,000 Palestinians killed, Harris took the lead in advocating for a conditional six-week ceasefire in Gaza. “What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating. We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed. Women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration,” Harris said. “Our hearts break for the victims of that horrific tragedy and for all the innocent people in Gaza who are suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe. People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane.” The following day, a Washington Post headline read: “Harris takes more public role criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza.”

While many Democrats hope that Biden dropping out of the race will open the door for a reset,  Harris’s political history indicates that she will continue to pursue the U.S. government’s overarching bi-partisan agenda on Israel and Palestine, including policies that aided and abetted the deaths of more than 40,000 Palestinians in nine months.

The reality is that the Gaza war is not the central issue in the 2024 campaign, though in a race where every vote counts, it could cause substantial damage to the Democrats. The Democratic Party is banking on the hope that voters disillusioned with the war are so terrified of Trump’s return to the White House that they will set aside their outrage over Gaza and coalesce around a candidate that is not Joe Biden. The question will be if voters hold Harris responsible for the administration’s Gaza policy or would be content with Biden’s retirement from the ticket.

"For months, we've warned that Biden's support for Israel's assault on Gaza would hurt his electability," said Layla Elabed, a leader of the Uncommitted movement, which called on Biden to end U.S. supplies of weapons to Israel. "By funding a government committing human rights abuses, we undermine our party’s stance against far-right extremism and contradict our commitment to democracy and justice. It's time to align our actions with our values. Vice President Harris can start the process to earn back trust by turning the page from Biden's horrific policies in Gaza."

Schuyler Mitchell contributed research.