Vice President Kamala Harris used the power of the law to advance the interests of the abortion industry as California attorney general, which pro-life advocates and conservatives worry will reflect the priorities of her potential administration.
Recently released videos from a citizen journalist who went undercover to expose Planned Parenthood’s involvement in fetal tissue trafficking — and was subsequently investigated by then-California Attorney General Harris — reignited criticism of her role in his prosecution. As prosecutions of pro-life activists have increased under the Biden administration, Harris’ past actions amplify concerns that her administration would take an even more aggressive stance, using the Department of Justice (DOJ) to selectively target political opponents.
David Daleiden, the journalist who was targeted by Harris for his undercover Planned Parenthood videos, doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that prosecutions of pro-life activists increased once Harris became vice president. “I think it’s a pattern for her,” he said.
“Her record shows that she is eager to weaponize the powers of her governmental office, whatever level of government it is, in order to chill the First Amendment speech rights of people who disagree with her,” Daleiden told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “And even more gravely, to do that on behalf of the very powerful special interests, like the abortion industry, that are her sponsors.”
While Harris was attorney general, her office initiated an investigation into Daleiden and a raid on his apartment, where agents seized his computer and other records, according to the LA Times. Current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, who took over Harris’ position as attorney general in 2017 after she became a senator, later charged Daleiden and Sandra Merritt for using fake IDs and a shell company to secretly record conversations with Planned Parenthood workers.
Daleiden said the law he was charged under had “never been applied to an undercover journalist before.”
“She weaponized that law selectively and exclusively towards me,” he said.
Daleiden’s footage has been sealed for years, but Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s July release of the unedited footage subpoenaed by Congress enabled CMP to republish the videos.
“I’m like, ‘Yeah, I have like a leg for you!’ I’m like, oh shit, if other people were to hear me, they’d be like, you are fucking evil,” Tram Nguyen, vice president of abortion access for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, said in a video released Thursday, which Daleiden recorded at the National Abortion Federation’s 2015 commercial trade show.
Planned Parenthood has long denied selling fetal tissue, claiming Daleiden’s videos were “misleadingly edited.” In a 2015 letter, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards announced the organization would no longer accept reimbursements for costs associated with donating tissue.
Planned Parenthood did not respond to a request for comment on the videos.
Harris has never answered questions about the content of the videos, Daleiden says. Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, she hasn’t sat for an interview or held a press conference.
“This is completely unexplored territory for her as far as commenting on it or acknowledging it,” he said.
As California attorney general, Harris also backed and defended a law — which was eventually rejected by the Supreme Court based on the First Amendment — that required California’s pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortion services.
The Supreme Court held that the law “imposes an unduly burdensome disclosure requirement that will chill their protected speech.”
‘Dangerous For First Amendment Rights’
“The Biden-Harris Department of ‘Injustice’ has been weaponized against pro-lifers and political enemies again and again,” Republican Virginia Rep. Bob Good told the DCNF, adding Harris’ prosecution of Daleiden should “send a chill down the spine of every American.”
“We would be wrong to think she wouldn’t do it again from the White House,” Good said.
Of all the cases brought under the Freedom of Access to Clinics (FACE) Act from 1994 to 2024, nearly 97% of the 205 cases were prosecutions against pro-life activists, according to data previously provided to the Daily Caller by Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy’s office.
Moreover, a quarter of all FACE Act cases were prosecuted during the Biden administration. Just five of the 55 cases brought under the Biden administration involved attacks on pregnancy centers.
The FACE Act prohibits using force or physical obstruction to prevent individuals from “obtaining or providing reproductive health services,” including at pro-life pregnancy centers, and from intentionally damaging the property of a reproductive health facility.
In 2022, pro-life activist and father Mark Houck’s home was raided by armed FBI agents while his children were home. Though the DOJ indicted him for allegedly assaulting an abortion clinic volunteer, he was ultimately found not guilty.
Lauren Handy, Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) director of activism, was sentenced to 57 months in prison in May after she was convicted under the FACE Act last year alongside several other pro-life activists for blocking access to a Washington, D.C. abortion clinic in 2020.
“Kamala Harris is personally responsible for protecting infanticide in our nation and the DOJ is profoundly complicit,” PAAU founder Terrisa Bukovinac, who launched a bid to challenge President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary last year, told the DCNF.
In March 2022, PAAU found five late-term aborted babies, which appeared to have been killed in partial-birth abortions, among 115 bodies of aborted babies in toxic waste containers from the Washington Surgi-Center in Washington, D.C. The D.C. government agreed with Republican lawmakers’ request to preserve the bodies for further investigation in February after the DOJ allegedly approved disposing of them.
“A person’s willingness to reject propriety and put their body in between the killers and our babies will always be a threat to an administration empowered by genocide,” Bukovinac said. “The only real defense against fascists like Harris is nonviolent resistance, therefore FACE must be repealed and every peaceful effort should be made to remove her from power.”
Harris’ pick for vice president, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also has a radically pro-abortion record. In 2023, he signed a law declaring abortion a “fundamental right” in the state and signed a bill that removed a requirement to take measures that “preserve the life and health” of infants born alive after a failed abortion attempt.
Harris’ willingness to prosecute pro-life activists signals broader concerns.
“I think that Kamala Harris as a public official is incredibly dangerous for First Amendment rights and civil liberties in this country,” Daleiden told the DCNF.
The DOJ has been broadly criticized for perceived politicization under the Biden-Harris administration, including through efforts to rush a federal prosecution against former President Donald Trump ahead of the election.
In June, the DOJ indicted Texas surgeon Dr. Eithan Haim, who blew the whistle after finding Texas Children’s Hospital was still performing sex change procedures on minors despite claiming it had stopped, for alleged violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
