Who Is Kamala Harris?

The world will quickly be getting to know presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Her long relationship—personal and political—with the scandal-scarred California power broker Willie Brown is instructive. Brown was instrumental in Harris’s rise in California politics. In return, she may have protected him and his allies from damaging investigations.

Brown rose through the ranks of the California State Assembly and became Speaker in 1980. He served in that post for fourteen years, ruling with an iron fist in a velvet glove, rewarding allies with lucrative patronage posts and punishing opponents. He called himself the “Ayatollah of the Assembly.” In 1996, he was elected mayor of San Francisco, serving two terms. Along the way, he attracted the attention of the FBI, which repeatedly investigated him but failed to bring charges.

The FBI may have failed, but Brown had plenty of critics. “The legacy of Willie Brown has been one of corruption and incompetence in government, and the [FBI] probes were a reflection of that,” the head of San Francisco Common Cause told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004.

By 2004, Brown was on his term-limited way out of office, but one of his key allies, Kamala Harris, was on her way up. Harris was elected San Francisco District Attorney in 2003. Brown had put his formidable political machine behind Harris, swinging a come-from-behind election her way

It was not the first time Willie Brown had given Kamala Harris a helping hand. The two dated in 1994 and 1995. In 1994, Brown appointed the then-obscure county prosecutor to two influential state commissions—the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission. Harris’s political rise was launched—elected DA in 2003 and 2007, California Attorney General in 2010 and 2014, United States Senator in 2016, and Vice President in 2020.

Questions persist about what Harris may have done for Brown and his allies. The investigative journalist Peter Schweizer noted in a recent interview with Breitbart that in her first DA race, Harris ran against the incumbent prosecutor, who was investigating corruption allegations against Brown. “And when she won,” Schweizer said, “she dropped a whole series of cases” connected to Brown.

The biggest case, Schweizer said, involves an 800-page document from the diocese of the Catholic Church in San Francisco detailing accusations of sexual abuse linked to “individuals and entities” with connections to the Democratic Party. But when “Kamala Harris came in, not only did she not prosecute anybody involved in the scandals, she actually refused to release the 800-page document. And it has been reported in San Francisco, that document disappeared and never was to be found.”

Those are serious charges that raise serious questions. What cases were dropped when Kamala Harris became San Francisco DA? Does she appear in records of FBI investigations of Willie Brown? What became of the San Francisco diocese investigation? Where is the 800-page report? Judicial Watch is investigating these issues and other matters linked to Democratic Party power brokers in California.

As for Willie Brown, now 90, he remains a strong Harris supporter. In a hastily called sidewalk press conference after President Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Brown suggested that the president should resign immediately, stepping aside for Harris.

A Biden resignation would “silence all of this nonsense about how to select some new nominee,” Brown said. “Her chances go up if he would at this moment say not only am I no longer the candidate, I’m no longer the president—she is.”

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Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org

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