Former Trump administration Department of Justice official Jeff Clark said Wednesday that he cannot find evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris ever personally led the prosecution of a single case at the local or state level.
“I’m looking to see whether she actually ‘first-chaired’ a trial, ever,” Clark told The Charlie Kirk Show on the Real America’s Voice network. “Otherwise, it’s really misleading to call yourself some kind of ace prosecutor.”
Harris frequently refers to her prosecutorial career as a major qualification for the presidency. As she often says in her stump speech:
As many of you know, before I was elected as Vice President, before I was elected as United States Senator, I was the elected Attorney General as I’ve mentioned to California, and before that I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.
There are records of her appearing in the courtroom, though not always for the better. Actor Jamal Trulove, who was wrongly convicted of murder in San Francisco when Harris was the district attorney, has said that she appeared in court when the verdict was read, and “bust out laughing.” He said he was only dimly aware of her during the trial.
Clark has been researching through legal databases online, and has solicited help from the public on social media. He said that while there is some evidence that she made appearances during some cases, there are no trial transcripts that yet show Harris led the prosecution in any particular case, or that she argued cases at the appellate level.
Harris failed the California Bar exam the first time she took it. She got her start in politics thanks to assistance from her boyfriend, Willie Brown, a California power broker who had been mayor of San Francisco and Speaker of the California State Assembly. Brown later admitted that he made sure Harris was appointed to two state boards.
As a local prosecutor, Harris was known for botching prosecutions while pursuing low-level offenders, such as the parents of truant schoolchildren or people arrested for marijuana possession. She infamously refused to seek the death penalty for a murderer who shot an off-duty policeman, Isaac Espinoza. As California Attorney General, she was known for pursuing a pro-life filmmaker and for trying to force conservative nonprofits to reveal their donors.
As a Senator, Harris made a name for herself by attacking Republican nominees at the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Clark was targeted by the January 6 Committee, ostensibly for his efforts to investigate allegations of voter fraud.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
