When Kamala Harris was announced as Joe Biden’s running mate, the left was thrilled to have a woman of color on the Democratic ticket. But a closer look at some of her past actions is leading to a lot of very serious questions about her suitability for the nation’s second-highest office.
Speaking to host Alex Marlow on Breitbart News Daily on Sirius XM, author Peter Schweizer explained how Harris refused to prosecute priests for sexual abuse while serving as the District Attorney for San Francisco.
We’re not just talking about one or two cases that slipped through. According to Schweizer, she didn’t prosecute a single one of the many cases of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests during her 13-year tenure. She served as DA from 2004 to 2011 at a time when many such cases were being prosecuted around the country. In fact, she was the only DA among 50 major metropolitan cities not to charge any priest with sexual abuse.
Moreover, after being elected DA, she put a swift end to plans by her predecessor, former DA Terence Hallinan, to publicly release a series of “clergy abuse files” that named priests who had been accused of sexual abuse. Hallinan had been planning to release these files despite pleas from the Archdiocese of San Francisco to keep them under wraps. The San Francisco archdiocese covers church operations in San Francisco as well as San Mateo and Marin counties.
Victims outraged by Harris's lack of action
Hallinan said that at least 40 current and former priests who had been accused of molestation were on the list. He was planning to redact victim names and pursue prosecutions, like many other areas were doing. According to Schweizer, Harris ensured that list could never be released to the public. At the time, this move earned her a slew of criticism from victims’ rights groups.
Schweizer told Marlow: “Some of the other groups went absolutely ballistic, and you can understand why. Kamala Harris claimed that she sealed those records to protect victims. The victims call that outrageous and wrong. They used language that I couldn’t use on radio.”
Several victims of clergy sex abuse in California told The Intercept that Harris’s office ignored their requests to access the investigative files that could have helped them get justice for what happened to them.
Making matters worse, Schweizer claims that Harris hid records about the abuses and retaliated against a DA who did try to take action.
Hallinan’s team of investigators had collected evidence as part of a big probe into the rampant clergy sexual misconduct there, and his team had prosecuted cases of abuse from decades earlier. Is it any surprise that Harris’s campaign to take Hallinan’s DA seat received a remarkable amount of donations from top Catholic Church officials? According to Schweizer, many of the lawyers and legal firms representing the archdiocese on different issues gave generous contributions to her campaign, some of whom had never donated in these types of races before.
Harris has often touted her hard stance on child sexual abuse cases, drawing attention to her record when it comes to prosecuting sex crimes and child exploitation. However, when the perpetrators come from the Catholic Church, it is a far different story.
It’s pretty shocking that Harris claims to be a victim’s advocate yet has such a horrific record when it comes to letting priests get away with abuse. Will American voters really allow someone who is so easily bought get within such easy reach of the presidency?
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.