Fact Check: Kamala Claims She Was Non-partisan Prosecutor After Targeting Conservatives

CLAIM: “In my career as a prosecutor I never looked at a a victim or witness and asked them, ‘Are you a Republican or a Democrat?’.”

VERDICT: MOSTLY FALSE. Harris targeted conservatives, including a pro-life filmmaker and non-profit groups.

Vice President Kamala Harris repeated a line Thursday in a town hall with Oprah Winfrey in which she claimed that she had never discriminated against victims or witnesses on the basis of their political views. (See 42:21 below.)

That is largely false. While some criminal cases she prosecuted as San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General may have involved Republican victims (though rarely, given how few Republicans live in San Francisco or the state as a whole), Harris actually victimized conservatives against whom she targeted her powers.

The most famous case is that of pro-life filmmaker David Daleiden, who produced videos that purported to expose Planned Parenthood officials being willing to sell discarded fetal tissue. Harris investigated Daleiden, allegedly after consultations with Planned Parenthood, and invoked a state law against recording confidential conversations — the first time that the somewhat obscure taw had ever been used in a prosecution against a member of the media.

Harris also tried to force conservative non-profit groups to disclose their donors to the state, in particular Americans for Prosperity, which was funded by the Koch brothers. The conservative groups fought back, eventually winning, 6-3, at the Supreme Court. Harris’s effort was widely viewed as an abuse of the First Amendment, motivated by politics.

So it is generally untrue for Harris to say she operated in a bipartisan way as a prosecutor at the state and local levels.

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.