She didn’t bother to stop the presses, so she ended up promoting a pervert. That’s the latest from Sen. Kamala Harris, the California Democrat who wants to be president.
As a prelude to that run, Harris released a new book this week, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. It was clearly written and sent to the publisher before a sexual harassment lawsuit against her longtime aide, Larry Wallace, became public. Because Harris features Wallace prominently.
Harris included a picture of herself with the disgraced aide, the Washington Free Beacon was first to report, and praised Wallace in the book for his “leadership” on a team tasked with developing “implicit bias and procedural justice training program.”
[Related: Kamala Harris expected to announce 2020 run on MLK Day]
Unfortunately for the senator, Wallace is an all-around creep, and that praise is now a political liability.
As director of the Division of Law Enforcement under then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris, he was accused of “gender harassment.” He asked his female executive to crawl under his desk to change the paper in his printer while she wore short skirts and dresses.
It’s gross and perverted, exactly the kind of misogyny Harris has repeatedly condemned on the Senate floor — which makes the next series of events troubling.
A lawsuit was filed in 2016 and a settlement reached for $400,000 in 2017. Harris insists she knew nothing of the allegations during this time. She was apparently so unaware that, even though the lawsuit wasn’t settled until later that May, Harris decided to hire Wallace that March to work in her Senate office.
“We were unaware of this issue and take accusations of harassment extremely seriously. This evening, Mr. Wallace offered his resignation to the senator, and she accepted it,” spokeswoman Lily Adams wrote in an email to the Sacramento Bee when the allegations first surfaced.
Distracted by higher ambition, Harris might have overlooked what was going on in the California attorney general’s office under her watch. Occupied by her transition to Congress later, Harris might have even missed the lawsuit. All of this is believable, though just barely. Harris can say she didn’t know and, absent any new evidence, no one can prove otherwise.
But Harris will run out of excuses when questioned about why she decided to send her book to the publisher. She had to know about the allegations against Wallace and about how her successor, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, used taxpayer dollars to settle the case and force the accuser to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Harris knew all of this before the book went to print.
Fixing the problem would have meant reprinting the book, in all likelihood. There was certainly time. The Sacramento Bee first reported the allegations on Dec. 5. Penguin Press published the first copies on Jan. 8, 2019. Money and, more importantly, time, would be lost if the book didn’t roll out on schedule.
One would think that if Harris cared more about protecting victims than her presidential ambitions, this is exactly what she would have done. She didn’t. Instead she let the book go to print, and she praised a pervert. Maybe she can delete all references to Wallace if there is a second printing.
