When the top dog in law enforcement is exposed for paying hush money to silence sexual harassment accusations and subsequent retaliation from employees, the resulting punishment varies by gender. With a simple whiff of impropriety in the throes of the #MeToo movement, seven men, both Republican and Democrat, resigned or did not seek reelection in the 2018 midterms.
Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), however, decided to run for president – the woman who cannot get her own house in order wants to reside in the big white manse at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
An investigative report by the Los Angeles Times has uncovered that Harris, through her Department of Justice, paid at least $1.1 million in cover-up money while serving six-years as California’s attorney general. And that tidy sum includes a hefty payout for a complaint against one of her closest advisors.
Harris, like Sergeant Schultz on the 70s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, insists “I know nothing!”
But how can that be?
Allegations and Reparations
The presidential hopeful and obnoxiously vocal #MeToo proponent, when faced with the LA Times report, claimed she heard it from them first. She has since bravely attempted to shoulder the burden, though placed the blame on her sheer volume of staff: “As the chief executive of a department of nearly 5,000 employees, the buck stopped with me.”
Harris’ state Department of Justice was found to have paid settlements for an assortment of violations including demands for gay sexual acts, unwanted touching, sex chatter, and the normal claims of wage-related inequality and denied advancement.
A few of the claims would be handled by middle managers and would not reach the desk of the top cop, officials claim. But did Harris not even once take a peek at the budgets, specifically line item expenditures, for sexual harassment claims in her own department? Seems unlikely for a woman with great ambition.
One incident involved a female assistant who was asked to change the paper in the copy machine on regular occasions – part of her administrative duties. But when the boss watched her from behind as she was on hands and knees, in a skirt, performing those duties under his desk, that crossed the line. And that boss man was Harris’ longtime and very close top aide, Larry Wallace. The price tag for his indiscretions was a scant $400K.
Oh, she must have known.
Jill Telfer, an attorney who represented some of the complainants, insisted Harris should have known about the harassment issues but had a policy of looking the other way:
“The Division of Law Enforcement for the AG’s office always felt they were above the law and may have kept a lid on things. There has been a culture of retaliation against employees who raise concerns of discrimination or harassment.”
Fibbing and Feinting
Harris wants to be queen. She is aggressive in seeking the optics that suit her agenda of climbing to the top spot in political America.
Recently, she giggled that in college she smoked marijuana, and inhaled, while zoning out to “Definitely Snoop, Tupac for sure,” not realizing that neither artist had produced music while she was an undergrad at Howard University, leaving in 1986. Or when she finished her degree at Hastings College of the Law in 1989. You can bet she now has full-time researchers in all things “cool” working overtime on her staff.
If she was getting her stone on and grooving to rap in 1991, when the debut 2Pacalypse Now was released by Tupac, or in 1993 when Snoop Dogg released his first album, Doggystyle, then Harris was Deputy District Attorney in Alameda County at the time – perhaps even in the throes of her May/December romance with Willie Brown. In other words, breaking the law, moving up in state politics, and getting paid by the taxpayers of California.
Harris also took the stage recently to demand a federal anti-lynching law be enacted – which coincided with actor Jussie Smollett’s false claim of a hate crime. Smollett’s claim that white supremacists had put a noose around his neck was later debunked by Chicago Police as a hoax.
She is, if anything, an opportunist.
Harris accepted Larry Wallace’s resignation in December 2018, ending a 14-year close relationship with her top aide, and has reinforced the “no exceptions” rule in her Senate office by stating, “No office is immune to misconduct, and there is much more work to do to ensure all are protected.”
Yes, Harris wants to be the queen of the Swamp. But for now, she’ll have to reign as the princess of doublespeak, or the magistrate of not “knowing nothing,” as she attempts to reinvent her past as a progressive, tough on crime, presidential contender.
Good luck with that.
