Lauren Moye, FISM NEWS
Vice President Kamala Harris’s previous role as the California attorney general continues to throw a shadow over her integrity and ethics. Recent court documents in an ongoing case between the People of California and two investigative journalists implicate that Harris illegally obtained evidence which she then turned over to an unrelated party.
On April 5, 2016, then Attorney General Kamala Harris ordered a raid on journalist David Daleiden’s home under a search warrant for two identify fraud charges. During this raid, law enforcement seized Daleiden’s unreleased video footage of Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation employees illegally selling fetal tissue.
Daleiden, alongside his partner Sandra Merritt, spent two years infiltrating and recording these conversations. Some of their video content had already been released to the public and court proceedings had begun in a civil case between NAF and Daleiden.
On April 6, 2016, recently discovered billing records show that NAF’s civil lawyers charged $262.50 for “coordinate review of new videos.”
Attorney Brent Ferreira stated to Fox News, “No discovery was provided by Mr. Daleiden’s attorneys in civil cases filed by PP and NAF at that time. The reference to new videos can only relate to the videos seized pursuant to the search warrant.”
This raid happened thirteen days after NAF held a phone conference with residing Attorney General Harris. The topic of this conversation was redacted but involved legal advice.
Daleiden’s attorneys argued that Harris’s deputy attorney general, Johnette Jauron, admitted to handing over videos to NAF. Jauron told the residing judge over Daleiden’s case in May of this year that she “had provided NAF with everything that I provided Defendant.”
Jauron later argued that her statement was taken out of context. She swore in an Aug. 23 affidavit: “I have not provided any materials seized pursuant to search warrant in this case to any unauthorized recipient.”
California’s SHIELD law prevents journalists from being forced to turn over their sources of information or unpublished material, including videos. In addition, Harris’s campaigns for Attorney General and Senator both included pro-abortion donors, including Planned Parenthood. In all, Harris took $81,000 in donations from pro-abortion parties.
Previously, emails revealed that Harris and her office corresponded with Planned Parenthood employees on Daleiden’s case, including filling police reports.
A Sept. 9, 2019 court document asserts that the search warrant on his residence “was executed in bad faith. Department of Justice agents assigned to a Special Investigations Team did not believe that there was probable cause for the warrant and one agent was so opposed that he took stress leave rather than continue with the case.”
Ferreira, who boasts of 30 years experience as a Los Angeles trial and appellate lawyer, said “this case is the most egregious abuse of prosecutorial power that I have ever seen.”
Fox News also reported that Daleiden said, “Planned Parenthood, NAF, and the California Attorney General beginning with Kamala Harris colluded to silence my reporting on illegal fetus trafficking and to obstruct justice in ongoing investigations of their practices.”