Yesterday, I had promised my followers to run a search to see if Kamala Harris had ever argued any appeals — ever. Even just one.
I got busy but have now completed that task.
The short answer is “no, never.” I could not find any evidence she had ever argued an appeal.
I challenge her to cite to the records in such a case and explain why it is not captured in Westlaw, which is the most comprehensive electronic research service in existence.
Here’s the search I ran in Westlaw, which other lawyers with access to Westlaw can readily replicate:
Databases for search: ALLFEDS + ALLSTATES
(this searches all reported and many unreported cases in all federal courts AND state courts — I did not even limit my search as to state courts in California alone).Boolean search terms: adv: ((kamala /3 harris) /2 argued)
This first part of that Boolean search finds the universe of all cases where Kamala Harris (including Kamala D. Harris and Kamala Devi Harris — or any other potential variants of her name) appears. Then the second part of the search narrows that universe down to cases where the word “argues” appears within 2 words of her name.
The search returns only 5 cases–see the first picture below.
I then manually checked each of the 5 cases returned by the search. In each of those, one of her subordinates argued, not her–see, for example, the second picture below (noting that her subordinate Steve Oetting was the one who argued Flournoy v. Small in the Ninth Circuit — one of the 13 federal circuits).
Practices can vary, but in general, prosecutors — especially in state systems — often argue their own appeals. Not Kamala. She never even attempted the feat, which requires the lawyer presenting or defending the appeal to both know the law, think on their feet in responding to questions from a panel of three or more judges, and know the factual record.
Westlaw also includes a report about cases worked on. But it goes back only to 2014, and by then she was already AG and doing nothing more than supervising, so nothing about her own chops as a lawyer in her own right can be gleaned from that report.
I note that I find it an insult that she sat in judgment on the second Senate Judiciary Committee vote on my nomination to join the leadership of the Justice Department in early 2018 (she voted against me, but I still got out of Committee). Based on my research thus far, she is not a technically accomplished lawyer. I also note that even during my high-level service in the U.S. Justice Department, I continued to argue some cases myself. Legal reporters were puzzled and asked me why several times. I told them that I wanted to keep the saw sharp. That is how real lawyers think and act. I also note that I argued more cases myself personally than any of the other 5 to 6 Assistant Attorney Generals in the Trump Administration running litigating Divisions at Main Justice like I did. (I originally ran 1 Division but eventually simultaneously ran 2 Divisions, which is why I talk about 5 to 6 other Division. The total number of litigating Divisions at USDOJ is 7.)
Kamala also takes after her running mate, Joe Biden, who did poorly in law school and was even caught plagiarizing during his studies. (And remember that Kamala failed the bar exam once.) Yet, Biden got to sit in judgment on the Senate Judiciary of both the great Yale Law Professor, constitutional and antitrust scholar, and Kirkland & Ellis partner Robert Bork — and in judgment of the great and long-service Justice Clarence Thomas — during their respective confirmation hearings.
And yet both Biden and Harris, when they were Senators, acted like royal legal scholars when they were questioning such nominees as Bork, Thomas, and Kavanaugh. It disgusted me at the time and still does. (I watched Bork’s nomination when I was in college. I watched Clarence Thomas’s the year before I started law school. And I watched Brett Kavanaugh’s during a period when I was preparing for an oral argument of my own before the Fifth Circuit, when I was in private practice.)
Now, one of our two major parties has nominated Kamala to be President. She wasn’t qualified to sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, let alone be Commander in Chief or Magistrate in Chief, or to select future Supreme Court Justices — which she will select an awful lot of if she gets elected and then packs the Supreme Court, as she has said she plans to do.
Lastly, I note that I am still trying to actually lay my hands on a transcript where she first-chaired a trial as a California prosecutor. She and her campaign (
@KamalaHarris
) could easily assist me and put to rest any doubts about her legal bona fides — and do so at any time — by locating such a transcript, uploading it to a storage site, and linking to it on X in response to this post.The challenge to do that is weeks old now. And the days are counting down to the election — one in which Democrats tell us that she is a sharp-as-nails prosecutor whom the Nation should trust with its highest office and this is one of her main qualifications.
That claim is starting to ring very hollow.
I hope that America wakes up before it is too late.
In 2003, when Kamala Harris was running for DA, she lied to voters & told them she had prosecuted hundreds of felony cases.
Here’s an audio where her opponent, Bill Fazio, confronts her about this & she completely dodges his questions. pic.twitter.com/1zrNsDIsFe
— Luke McCool (@McCool4u) September 25, 2024