Vice President Kamala Harris is actively raising money for a bail fund that busts violent criminals from jail as her nascent presidential campaign signals her candidacy will lean heavily on her roots as a tough-on-crime former prosecutor.
Harris urged her followers to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund in June 2020 as Black Lives Matter rioters wreaked havoc in Minneapolis in the days following George Floyd’s death. Harris’s fundraising efforts helped the fund raise more than $41 million in 2020, but the group only used a small fraction of that bounty—$210,000—to bail rioters out of jail. The remaining funds helped post bail for violent criminals such as Christopher Boswell, a twice-convicted rapist who was freed from jail in 2020 pending kidnapping and sexual assault charges after the Minnesota Freedom Fund paid $350,000 for his release.
"The last time we were down there, the clerk said, ‘we hate it when you bail out these sex offenders, that is what they said,’" former Minnesota Freedom Fund interim executive director Greg Lewin told Fox9 in August 2020.
The Minnesota Freedom Fund continues to reap dividends from Harris’s fundraising efforts well into 2024. The vice president’s fundraising page for the group, which contains a photo of a triumphant Harris before a crowd of supporters alongside her 2020 campaign logo, is active and accepted a contribution from this reporter on Monday morning.
Harris criticized the cash bail system as a major contributor to systemic racism during her failed 2020 presidential campaign. But Harris sang a different tune about cash bail when she served as San Francisco district attorney in 2004. Back then, Harris touted cash bail as an invaluable tool to reduce violent crime in her city and pledged to increase rates to dissuade people from coming to San Francisco "to commit crimes because it’s cheaper to do it," the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Top Harris aides signaled Monday that Harris will adopt a "prosecutor for president" framework for her 2024 campaign, CNN reported. Former president Donald Trump’s campaign said Monday it will highlight Harris’s support of the Minnesota Freedom Fund to counter her tough-on-crime persona.
"Kamala Harris encouraged people to contribute to a bail fund to free violent rioters. One of those freed ended up being charged with murder," Trump super PAC MAGA Inc posted on X. "Kamala Harris bails out criminals, and Americans pay the price."
The Minnesota Freedom Fund was a small charity with a $230,000 budget before Harris and other prominent Democrats helped transform the fund into a $41 million powerhouse in 2020. Before Floyd’s death, the fund could only afford an average bail of $342. After receiving its financial windfall, its average bail ballooned to over $13,000, Fox9 reported, enabling it to free hardened criminals from jail.
Lewin, the fund's former interim executive director, said in August 2020 that a defendant's charges had no bearing on whether or not he would fork over donated funds to secure their release, a policy that had deadly consequences for Minnesotans.
"I often don’t even look at a charge when I bail someone out," Lewin said. "I will see it after I pay the bill because it is not the point. The point is the system we are fighting."
Career criminal George Howard shot and killed a man during a road rage incident in August 2021, just three weeks after the Minnesota Freedom Fund bailed him out of jail, the Free Beacon reported.
Later, in May 2022, repeat felon Shawn Michael Tillman shot and killed a passenger on a St. Paul light rail platform after the Minnesota Freedom Fund posted his bail the month prior on an unrelated indecent exposure charge.
The Harris campaign did not return a request for comment.