Kamala Harris is boycotting a criminal justice forum in South Carolina after President Trump described himself as a victim of injustice at the multiday event.
The California senator, 55, announced her plans to skip Saturday’s 2019 Second Step Presidential Justice Forum at Benedict College following an address by Trump Friday. The president was in Columbia, South Carolina, to receive the Bipartisan Justice Award for signing the First Step Act into law last year.
“As the only candidate who attended an HBCU, I know the importance that these spaces hold for young Black Americans,” Harris said in a statement. “Today, when it became clear Donald Trump would receive an award after decades of celebrating mass incarceration, pushing the death penalty for innocent Black Americans, rolling back police accountability measures and racist behavior that puts people’s lives at risk, and then learned all but ten Benedict students are excluded from participating, I cannot in good faith be complicit in papering over his record.”
Harris, a Howard University graduate, will instead host a sideline roundtable as other Democratic White House hopefuls — including former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg — woo potential primary voters in the early-voting state at the official forum.
The former San Francisco district attorney and two-term California state attorney general on Friday called Trump “a lawless President.”
“Not only does he circumvent the laws of our country and the principles of our Constitution, but there is nothing in his career that is about justice, for justice, or in celebration of justice,” she wrote.
Trump, 73, told a majority black crowd on Friday that the Democrat-led House impeachment investigation into the Ukraine affair is a “witch hunt” and that “we’re working to put an end for everybody to horrible injustice and the horrible practices that we’ve seen.”
“Justice, fairness, and due process are core tenets of our democracy,” he said. “In America, you’re innocent until proven guilty, and we don’t have investigations in search of that crime.”
The president ran on a “tough on crime” platform in his 2016 campaign, during which he was criticized for his record on race. He faced questions, for example, over his decision to purchase full-page ads in several New York newspapers in 1989 over the “Central Park Five,” a group of black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping and brutally beating a jogger, Trisha Meili.
The First Step Act was a landmark piece of legislation that introduced a raft of sentencing reforms and earlier release measures, including banning the shackling of jailed pregnant women and requiring that prisoners be housed within 500 miles of their family. Criminal justice activists are now pushing lawmakers to implement a second phase of changes. Trump has proposed a Second Step Act that focuses on easing employment barriers for formerly incarcerated people.
