Harris takes money from the law firm that represented Epstein

Kamala Harris took money from law firm that represented Epstein on same day she blasted it

Kamala Harris bemoaned the influence of the powerful and connected elite last Tuesday when she called on top Justice Department officials to recuse themselves from any matter related to Jeffrey Epstein. She said their former law firm’s work on behalf of the financier accused of sexual abuse “calls into question the integrity of our legal system.

Yet the same day, Harris’ husband headlined a Chicago fundraiser for her presidential campaign that was hosted by six partners of that firm – Kirkland and Ellis, according to an invitation obtained by The Associated Press.

Harris, a California senator and Democratic presidential candidate, was one of several White House hopefuls to blast the handling of Epstein’s case in Florida a decade ago, when his lawyers negotiated a deal with federal prosecutors that allowed him to avoid the possibility of years in prison.

But her decision to move ahead with the fundraiser hosted by Kirkland and Ellis partners while criticizing the firm underscores the tension that can arise when a politician’s rhetoric collides with their need to raise money to sustain a presidential campaign.

"If any connection with Kirkland and Ellis is a stain on (senior Justice Department officials), why isn’t a connection with the law firm for the receipt of campaign contributions a stain on her own campaign?” said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney for the good government group Common Cause

This is a good question don't you think?

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That's all you had to say. Don't care who her johns are.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

snoopydawg's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

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and John Harris (the wrestler "Kamala the Ugandan Headhunter"):
1, Kamala Harris is female, John Harris is male.
2, Kamala Harris has both her legs, John Harris has had both legs amputated due to diabetes.
3, John Harris played a heel, Kamala Harris isn't playing.

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On to Biden since 1973

We claim that every accused is entitled to legal counsel and a presumption of innocence, despite past deeds, which are not admissible in court. The alternative is empowering government to railroad every accused, especially those with a prior record. ("Round up the usual suspects.")

And, as we all know, it's an ugly fact of real life in the US that a wealthy person like Epstein can afford lawyers from Kirkland, Ellis, while a poor person may get a court-appointed attorney getting paid (relative) peanuts to fulfill his or her Constitutional role.

So, intellectually, I can't blame lawyers from Kirkland Ellis for representing Epstein, even though, emotionally, the nature of his alleged crimes make me want to knee jerk. And, being a former government prosecutor, Kamala Harris can't blame defense counsel, either, simply because they are fulfilling their Constitutional role for someone who can afford to pay them.

I certainly can blame Harris for pretending to blame KE for acting as defense counsel while attempting to slip money they give her into her pocket.

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snoopydawg's picture

@HenryAWallace

Of course she is wrong about this.

She said their former law firm’s work on behalf of the financier accused of sexual abuse “calls into question the integrity of our legal system.”

She knows damn well that every person regardless of their crimes are entitled to be represented.

I'm pointing out Kambama's hypocrisy as is the author.

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I know that and did not suggest otherwise.

I'm pointing out Kambama's hypocrisy as is the author.

As am I.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

...group of lawyers and a very tiny group of judges that handle all of the situations that the DC elite find themselves involved in?

Those judges are supposed to be drawn at random, but not for these folks.

When you look at who appointed any particular judge on any particular case, it starts to make a strange kind of sense. I read someplace that Debbie Wasserman's brother is the guy who assigns cases to the DC judges.

I never got that close to the legal connectivity in DC until the Russia Hoax was foisted off on Americans — then I started seeing the same names over and over again. So I took a closer look. What a tangled web.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
lotlizard's picture

I wish the media and progressives and everyone would scrutinize that as closely as they’re doing with the deal Epstein got from Alexander Acosta.

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gulfgal98's picture

what is so disturbing about Kamala Harris in everything she says or does. She says one thing and the next day walks it back or says the exact opposite without even batting an eye. It makes this observer think that she is a sociopath that does not care whether or not she lies. I have not said this about any other 2020 (Democratic party) candidate including Joe Biden, but Harris' cavalier attitude toward the truth and her walking back her promises is very disturbing in light of her record in California. And she does not seem to care. She says whatever is advantageous at the moment and then acts as if she never said it.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Pluto's Republic's picture

@gulfgal98

...that explains "The two faces of Kamala Harris." To me, she operates within the typical MO of the psychopath. Jacobin provided the examples:

Harris’s rise has produced a fiery debate among liberals and the Left. Leftists and progressives have come out in strong opposition to Harris’s candidacy, with some declaring #NeverKamala and some high-profile Bernie Sanders supporters, such as National Nurses United executive director RoseAnn DeMoro, making clear their lack of enthusiasm for her candidacy. For some prominent liberals, this pushback is simply the product of virulent racism and sexism among an imagined (and non-existent) all-white, all-male, Sanders-supporting base.

Throughout her career, Harris has been called the “female Obama.” In reference to her race, this is lazy and arguably even racist. But the comparison is apt with reference to her politics. Harris has emulated the Obama approach, delivering a combination of some notable progressive victories and pleasant rhetoric and a steadfast avoidance of structural change — paired, in some cases, with far-from-progressive policies.

Much as Obama pursued policies starkly opposed to his own rhetoric, Harris’s record is defined by policies that undercut her proclaimed vision.

The death penalty is a prime example. Harris deserves credit for refusing to execute a man while under tremendous pressure to do so. But despite her vaunted personal opposition, she never challenged the death penalty during her time as attorney general — and in fact did the very opposite, actively working to keep it in existence.

When a federal judge ruled California’s enforcement of the death penalty unconstitutional, Harris appealed what she called a “flawed” decision. She would continue to defend the death penalty as the case wound through the federal courts.

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More of the same. She will lose if the Democrats run her.

The Democrats think that they can ride Kamala to the Right and scoop up moderate Republicans for the win. This is why they keep losing.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

and it has nothing to do with her race or gender as I say below. This is the best article I've read that explains why she should get nowhere near the WH.

Kamala Harris Is a Cop Who Wants To Be President

The California senator and former prosecutor has a long record of pushing illiberal policies.

In the years since former California Attorney General Kamala Harris entered national public life—first as a U.S. senator, now as a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination—one strain of criticism has surfaced again and again. It can be captured in just five words: Kamala Harris is a cop.

The phrase, which the candidate's critics use frequently, is meant to conjure more than just Harris' history as a hard-nosed San Francisco prosecutor. It's colloquial. To label someone a cop in this way is never to invoke the best behavior one might expect from police officers. It implies the person is a bully, a bootlicker, a professional tattler—the sort of person who shuts down un-authorized lemonade stands run by kids. A cop, in this context, is someone who will always defer to authority and the status quo, someone who is unaccountable and not to be trusted. Calling someone a cop invokes the worst sorts of police overreach, a legalistic authoritarianism that exists for its own sake.

During her 28-year tenure as a county prosecutor, district attorney (D.A.), and state attorney general (A.G.), Harris proved quite willing to live up to the epithet. In the public eye, she spoke of racial justice and liberal values, bolstering her cred as one of the Democratic Party's rising stars. But behind closed doors, she repeatedly fought for more aggressive prosecution not just of violent criminals but of people who committed misdemeanors and "quality of life" crimes.

Every attorney general fights for state power and police prerogatives. It's part of the job. But over and over again, Harris went beyond the call of duty, fighting for harsher sentences, larger bail requirements, longer prison terms, more prosecution of petty crimes, greater criminal justice involvement in low-income and minority communities, less due process for people in the system, less transparency, and less accountability for bad cops.

In the early days of her presidential campaign, Harris has sought to define herself as a liberal reformer who has kept up with the times. But a review of her career shows a distinct penchant for power seeking and an illiberal disposition in which no offense is small or harmless enough to warrant lenience from the state. Now she wants to bring that approach to the highest office in the land.

Liberal Politician, Illiberal Prosecutor

Harris campaigned on promises to avoid seeking capital punishment, reform the use of enhanced sentencing, rely on treatment and diversion programs (rather than prison terms) for nonviolent drug offenders, and generally take a holistic approach to crime. In March 2003, she told the Ukiah Daily Journal that exploitation in the sex trade needed "a social services response instead of a criminal justice response." That October, she told the San Francisco Examiner that the D.A. must "participate with other agencies within the city…to divert people who end up being successfully prosecuted by the criminal justice system into appropriate rehabilitation."

But once in office, Harris would revise, if not completely reverse, many of her previously stated principles.

In 1994, California had passed a three-strikes law, under which a second felony conviction automatically resulted in an enhanced sentence and a third felony conviction automatically resulted in 25 years to life. At her inauguration, Harris promised that she would "only use three strikes when the third strike is a serious or violent felony" and "never charge the death penalty."

Barely a year after taking office, Harris encountered a defendant who had previously been charged with a serious crime and was then being charged with a nonviolent third offense: illegal possession of a handgun by a felon. She pushed for a three-strikes application, seeking 25 years to life in prison. "When you talk about crimes that involve guns [and] certain sex offenses, while they're not defined by the Penal Code as serious, they are serious," she told the Associated Press in January 2005. Harris' position boiled down to an argument that she alone would define which offenses deserved a sentencing enhancement—and in her view, weapons charges always counted.

She would eventually abandon her anti–death penalty stance too. In 2014, as state attorney general, she appealed the decision of a judge who had ruled that California's capital punishment scheme was unconstitutional, arbitrarily applied, and plagued with inexcusable delays. Curiously, she said the ruling "undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants."

She fought against a judge who told her to ease prison crowding, but she argued that if she let people out who had non criminal sentences that it would cost the state more money because she used them for prison labor jobs. They were sent to fight fires and got paid $1.00-2.00 per hour. Not sure what else they did, but fighting fires is very dangerous don't you think to only get paid that amount?

No way I'd vote for her, but so many others love her because somehow they can turn a blind eye to her history. DoV is one of those...

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@snoopydawg

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

snoopydawg's picture

@gulfgal98

Kamala Harris in everything she says or does. She says one thing and the next day walks it back or says the exact opposite without even batting an eye.

She says one thing one day and the next she says something totally opposite. She ran on being a progressive attorney general, but once in office she turned a complete 180.

Obama ran on filibustering the FISA bill, voted for it and then expanded the police state to the ninth. "I don't believe in stupid wars", but then started bombing countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 and invaded Libya and Syria on false pretenses.

He made it so that no one running should be taken seriously again. People say that they saw through his shtick and now Kambama is showing us that she won't do anything that she says she will.

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