Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff cut checks to a progressive legal group that pushed to defund the police and make Washington, D.C., a permanent “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants, documents show.
Legal Aid DC, a nonprofit organization in the district that works on housing law and represents low-income clients in other areas, received a $1,000 donation from Harris and Emhoff in 2023, according to a copy of their joint tax return. In 2021, the couple also directed $1,000 to Legal Aid DC, a Washington Examiner review of financial disclosures found.
News of the donations, which have not been reported on until now, comes as Harris faces scrutiny on the 2024 campaign trail over her support in 2020 for defunding the police and her handling of the border crisis. Harris has reversed course on a variety of her left-wing policy positions after becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. But the vice president’s willingness to fund Legal Aid DC as recently as 2023 could raise questions about her ties to controversial progressive activists — including after Harris selected Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who has been widely criticized over his response to the 2020 riots in Minnesota, as her running mate.
Formed in 1932, Legal Aid DC calls itself “the district’s oldest and largest civil legal services organization” helping to “make justice real in individual and systemic ways.” In 2020, as riots shook cities across the United States in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Legal Aid DC published a statement on its website by project coordinator Adam Jacobs noting that it “stands in solidarity with those speaking out, demonstrating, and demanding a country and society that will treat every one of its residents with dignity and respect.”
Days later, in June 2020, the left-wing group’s housing law attorney Amanda Korber was quoted in a story pressing for fewer police officers in the district. Legal Aid DC shared the article on social media, writing, “As Legal Aid’s Amanda Korber noted in the article, we are concerned, especially given the ongoing protest movement, about any solution that involves more police and policing in DC public housing. #BlackLivesMatterDC.”
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