Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States, has been facing criticism from criminal justice reform advocacy groups over her campaign’s efforts to label former President Donald Trump as a “criminal.”
According to Fox News, over 160 advocate groups sent an open letter to Harris demanding that she stop using terms such as “criminal” and “felon” to describe Trump, who was convicted on 34 different criminal charges in a New York court case that has widely been described as politically motivated and illegal.
“There will be those that simplify a match-up between you and former President Trump as one between a ‘tough-on-crime’ prosecutor and a ‘criminal,'” the letter reads. “We hope you will resist this language and this framing. It is both harmful to us and harmful to your campaign.”
The letter says that the use of such language will only further stigmatize all criminals.
“First, we believe you have been and will be a criminal justice reform leader,” the letter continued. “And, also, words like ‘criminal’ and ‘felon’ paint with a broad brush that stains more than 70 million Americans with criminal records, including the 1 in 3 black men who have felony convictions.”
Among the signatories were representatives from such groups as The Bail Project and Beauty After Bars.
Harris has long been accused of flip-flopping when it comes to enforcement of the law and criminal prosecutions. As Attorney General of California, Harris was infamously very strict in prosecuting marijuana-related crimes, while also fighting against cashless bail systems in order to make it harder for jailed individuals to post bail. But since entering the national stage as a senator, she supported far-left rioters who actively destroyed property during the race riots of 2020, and even posted a Tweet with a link to a bail fund to bail out rioters who had just burned down a police station in Minneapolis.
In one of her first speeches after Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Harris said that she knew “Donald Trump’s type” as she described various criminals that she prosecuted as an attorney general.
However, many have criticized her campaign’s decision to frame President Trump as a criminal and herself as a prosecutor, as President Trump’s popularity has consistently improved with each criminal action taken against him. His poll numbers rose after the FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate, his Georgia mugshot, and his New York conviction, respectively. Following the latter occurrence, the Trump campaign set an all-time record in the number of small-dollar donations received over the course of a 24-hour period.
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