Vice President Kamala Harris is coming under renewed scrutiny as she embarks on her second White House bid over her promotion in 2020 of a bail fund that helped free convicts, including murderers and serial domestic abusers.
Facing heightened pressure from his fellow Democrats, octogenarian President Joe Biden on Sunday dropped out of the 2024 race and passed the torch to 59-year-old Harris, who has hauled in tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations since that time. Should she lock down the Democratic nomination, the former California senator and attorney general in the Golden State will likely face continued soft-on-crime criticism from Republicans ahead of November, particularly over her prior support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a nonprofit group that fundraised after the death of George Floyd to bail out criminals from jail.
"Kamala Harris prioritizes criminals over law-abiding Americans," Alex Pfeiffer, the spokesman for Make America Great Again Inc., the main super PAC boosting former President Donald Trump, told the Washington Examiner. "She’ll fundraise for their bail if they are rioters, or in the case of illegals, give them taxpayer-funded healthcare and protect them from deportation."
Since Biden's endorsement of Harris, the super PAC has joined other Trump allies in ramping up this line of attack, posting on X Monday that "Americans pay the price" for her "radical record." The super PAC also highlighted Harris's comment in 2020 arguing the United States should "reimagine" public safety, posting on X, "Kamala Harris might love criminals, but she hates the police."
The Minnesota Freedom Fund, a previously little-known organization that tax forms show raised a staggering $41 million in 2020, was notably promoted in June of that year by then-Sen. Harris, who posted on social media, "If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota." Formed in 2016, the MFF "has paid more than $26 million to free 3,000+ people from pre-trial jailing and immigration detention" and "pays criminal bail and immigration bonds for those who cannot otherwise afford to as we seek to end discriminatory, coercive, and oppressive jailing," according to MFF's website.
To Republicans, the MFF became a key example of the Left's push in 2020 to defund police — an extremely unpopular movement that is now disavowed by most Democrats.
Court records show that the Harris-endorsed MFF was used to bail out violent criminals, including Shawn Michael Tillman of St. Paul, who was sentenced to life in prison this March for first- and second-degree murder. George Howard, another man that the MFF freed, pleaded guilty in 2023 to second-degree murder for shooting and killing another man in 2021 in Minneapolis.
On Sunday, senior Trump adviser Jason Miller posted links to prior articles about the MFF bailing out Tillman and Howard, as well as an August 2020 piece in the Federalist by writer David Marcus titled, "Meet The Rioting Criminals Kamala Harris Helped Bail Out Of Jail."
The Federalist article was based on a Fox 9 investigation listing several others accused of violent crimes who the MFF bailed out. One person who benefited from the MFF, Christopher Boswell, is a twice-convicted rapist, the outlet reported .
Another person, Darnika Floyd, was later sentenced in 2021 to prison after being charged with second-degree murder in 2018 for stabbing a man to death who did not want to have sex with her.
During the campaign, Harris will have to answer publicly for her support of the MFF, in the eyes of one veteran GOP strategist, who is not directly involved with the 2024 race.
"There's been a reckoning in the Democratic Party over criminal justice issues," that person told the Washington Examiner. "They've elected very liberal prosecutors who were weak on crime, to say the least. Then there was a backlash in cities."
To one Democratic strategist, it's expected that Republicans would target the Left for being soft on crime in the era of the defund the police movement. To that person, Democrats can try to shift the narrative toward the GOP's own candidate, Trump, and his legal troubles .
"You want to talk about public safety and being a convict? Well, you know, you've been convicted of 34 counts in one case alone and have multiple cases pending, right?" the Democratic strategist, who is not involved in the 2024 race, said Team Harris may argue. Spokespeople for Harris did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
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Meanwhile, the MFF that Harris promoted also helped free serial domestic abusers, the Daily Caller reported in 2020.
"@KamalaHarris supported a bail fund for Minnesota criminals who should have stayed behind bars," Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) said on Sunday.
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