California AG Kamala Harris Blends Political Ambitions and Legal Investigations, Say Critics

California Attorney General Kamala Harris is mixing her personal political ambitions with her office’s non-political law-enforcement duties, say critics.

Harris is a Democratic primary candidate for a California seat in the U.S. Senate. She received contributions to her prior AG re-election campaign from Planned Parenthood. She’s now using her campaign website to rally voter-support for the abortion-network–which is a huge donor to many Democrats’ election campaign–while also conducting a legal investigation of the network’s most prominent critic.

That critic is David Daleiden, director of the Center for Medical Progress, who has published a devastating undercover video-investigation of possible federal crimes by the abortion-network.

“Harris can’t even pretend to be objective in this case,” said Lila Rose, the president of pro-life group Live Action. Rose continued:

She has a petition on her campaign website to collect signatures to defend abortion giant Planned Parenthood. And her radical pro-abortion positions are well known, including her sponsoring of a California law to force pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to tell patients where they can go to get abortions.

Harris’s agenda is obvious:  Even the L.A. Times called Harris “politically ambitious” and said that prosecuting CMP would help her U.S. Senate campaign. It’s clear why–while executing a search warrant on the whistleblower–she won’t also “search” the huge amount of video footage showing Planned Parenthood’s potentially illegal activity and open an investigation into that.

Harris’ Senate campaign website–kamalaharris.org--includes a petition, ostensibly published in the early part of January, that invites her supporters to “Add Your Name To Defend Planned Parenthood.” Harris’ campaign continues:

For many, the new year is a chance for a fresh start–but not for some in Washington. It is Congress’s first week back, and apparently, they haven’t reshuffled their priorities.

They voted to defund Planned Parenthood.

We can all agree on one thing. Washington is broken. Voting to strip federal funding from an organization that provides vital health services to 2.7 million Americans is the epitome of dysfunction.

Once again, we need you to take a stand and join Kamala in defending Planned Parenthood.

Sign our petition to protect this organization and the important work it does.

In her current role as California’s attorney general, however, Harris has been investigating Daleiden for months in the wake of his series of videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies on the open market and altering the position of babies during abortion to harvest the most intact body parts.

On Tuesday, Harris’s office conducted a raid of Daleiden’s apartment.

BREAKING NEWS: California authorities raid home of anti-Planned Parenthood videographer https://t.co/VCazaInbit

— NARAL Pro-Choice California (@ProChoiceCA) April 6, 2016

Daleiden released the following statement following the raid:

Today, the California Attorney General’s office of Kamala Harris, who was elected with tens of thousands of dollars from taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood, seized all video footage showing Planned Parenthood’s criminal trade in aborted baby parts, in addition to my personal information. Ironically, while seizing my First Amendment work product, they ignored documents showing the illicit scheme between StemExpress and Planned Parenthood. This is no surprise–Planned Parenthood’s bought-and-paid-for AG has steadfastly refused to enforce the law against the baby body parts traffickers in our state, or even investigate them–while at the same time doing their bidding to harass and intimidate citizen journalists. We will pursue all remedies to vindicate our First Amendment rights.

“To storm into a private citizen’s home with a search warrant is outrageously out of proportion for the type of crime alleged,” said Daleiden’s attorney Matt Heffron, a former federal prosecutor from Arizona. “It’s a discredit to law enforcement, an oppressive abuse of government power.”

The co-dependent relationship between the abortion industry and the Democrat Party has been extensively documented. For example, Harris has received funding from Planned Parenthood during a prior election. The Federalist reports:

Harris, who is running for Senate, received $15,000 from Planned Parenthood during her reelection campaign in 2014, according to ElectionTrack.com. Harris has also decried attempts by Senate Republicans to defund the nation’s largest abortion provider, stating that Planned Parenthood serves the needs of millions of women.

Hillary Clinton, The Washington Free Beacon reports, has “paid Planned Parenthood thousands of dollars using campaign funds.” Planned Parenthood and the larger abortion industry have endorsed Clinton in the primary.

Four separate payments from Clinton’s campaign were received by the nation’s top abortion business as “reimbursements for ‘staff time’” for get out the vote efforts against rival Bernie Sanders.

And the feeling is apparently mutual. The report states:

Clinton received financial support from the organization, collecting more than $20,000 from executives and employees of the national organization and its regional affiliates—20 times more money than the rest of the presidential field combined.

Recently, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) vetoed his legislature’s bill to redirect Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood facilities in his state to other healthcare centers that do not provide abortions.

“We’re here today to smack down the latest attack on women’s health care rights,” McAuliffe said. “I am very proud of my strong record on reproductive rights, and let me tell you this, I am very proud to veto this particular piece of legislation.”

As reported by the Virginia Bureau of Watchdog.org, Planned Parenthood contributed more than $1.7 million to McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign in 2013. Abortion industry lobbying organization NARAL donated $56,000 to his campaign, as well.

“We now know how much money it costs to purchase a veto from Terry McAuliffe – right around $2 million in campaign contributions,” Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation of Virginia, said.

The special House panel investigating Planned Parenthood’s practices has six strongly pro-abortion Democrat members – all of whose campaigns have received donations from Planned Parenthood.

Data from the Center for Responsive Politics lists Planned Parenthood donations to political campaigns from 1998 through the 2016 election cycles. The following amounts are totals Planned Parenthood contributed to the campaigns for the Democrats on the special panel:

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL): $11,865

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY): $5,535

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO): $36,735

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA): $4,000

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA): $19,232

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ): $2,500

However, as Newsbusters reported, Planned Parenthood has given these members of Congress more than $81,000 since 1990:

Back when the Center for Responsive Politics listed donations going back to 1990, MRC Culture counted $13,115 for Rep. Jan Schakowsky in contributions from Planned Parenthood. Adding that number to the total of the others since 1998 ($68,002) brings the total to more than $81,000.

Additionally, RedState reports the following:

The abortion lobby, EMILY’s List, has given the ranking member of this panel (which is supposed to be investigating the abortion industry’s legally dubious practice of selling aborted babies’ body parts to pad “their bottom line”), Rep. Schakowsky, over $64,000 dollars in direct campaign contributions. It has handed Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) over $48,000.

Likewise NARAL Pro-Choice America has flooded Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)’s campaign coffers with over $31,000 and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)’s with over $19,000.

All totaled, the abortion industry has paid more than $305,000 for the six Democrats appointed to the House’s select panel tasked with investigating Planned Parenthood.

DeGette also admitted in 2011 that she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Colorado Planned Parenthood for several years in the 1990s.

Though Planned Parenthood has denied any wrongdoing in its sale of body parts, the abortion business also released a statement in October announcing it will no longer accept payments for aborted fetal tissue.

The organization and its leftwing media supporters continue to insist the videos, produced by CMP, were “deceptively edited.”

A Democrat-affiliated opposition research firm named Fusion – which Planned Parenthood itself hired to review the videos – said while their analysts observed the videos had been edited, “the analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.”

Additionally, Fusion noted, “[A]nalysts found no evidence that CMP inserted dialogue not spoken by Planned Parenthood staff.”

An analysis by Coalfire, a third-party forensics company hired by Alliance Defending Freedom, found that the videos were “not manipulated” and that they are “authentic.”

Nevertheless, under suspicion of bias, Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Devon Anderson convened a grand jury that cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing in the video exposé and, instead, indicted Daleiden and his colleague Sandra Merrit. The grand jury, it was reported, did not even vote on Planned Parenthood’s case.

Subsequently, two pro-choice law professors wrote that the indictment of Daleiden and Merrit amounted to “a stunning act of legal jujitsu” and was a “deeply disturbing” outcome, both for the First Amendment and for undercover citizen journalists attempting to expose corruption.