Kamala Harris’ Payroll Records

[WEEKLY UPDATE]

PRESIDENT TRUMP RECOGNIZES JUDICIAL WATCH

[[link removed]]

In his speech to the 2020 Council for National Policy this week,
President Trump spoke about the dangers of the proposed vote-by-mail
policies that would pave the way for ballot harvesting. And as he did,
he paused to recognize
[[link removed]]
Judicial
Watch.

Tom, where’s Tom, Tom where is he, stand up Tom, will you Tom
Fitton. That’s Judicial Watch … they do a fantastic job. I wish he
had more help. I mean honestly I wish he had more help. But it’s not
easy beating a system that’s been in place for many, many years,
right? Many, many years it’s been in place and it’s sad but, 51
million votes are being sent and nobody knows who’s getting them and
what happens if you send them to an all Democrat area but not to an
all Republican area. How do you win an election? This is really a very
serious problem…. This is about all of us. This is about the
country.

This pleased me, of course, because we have been without peer in our
fight for clean voter rolls and clean elections. In his remarks the
President made it clear that our efforts are critical, and he
reinforced my desire to succeed.

KAMALA HARRIS’ SAN FRANCISCO PAY RECORDS

Surely, Kamala Harris expected intense scrutiny when she agreed to run
for vice president, and we’re happy to oblige.

We reported on 131 pages
[[link removed]]
of payroll records from the District Attorney’s Office of the City
and County of San Francisco detailing payments to Senator Kamala
Harris (D-CA) when she was employed by the San Francisco District
Attorney’s Office.

Harris, the 2020 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, worked in the
San Francisco city attorney’s office from 2000-2003; she was San
Francisco district attorney from 2004-2010. She was elected California
attorney general in 2011.

We obtained the records in response to a pair of California Public
Records Act requests.

The documents include a May 17, 2005, letter
[[link removed]]
from Susie B. Sales, the Payroll/Personnel Services Division (PPSD)
Officer for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office (SFDAO),
notifying San Francisco Controller Johnny Zabala that Harris had
improperly received incentive payments. Sales writes:

Hi, Johnny:

Thank you for your phone call this afternoon regarding the report that
PPSD is working on with regards to identifying employees who are still
receiving incentive and should not have due to changes of job
classification. Kamala Harris “MAAINQ” [Municipal Attorneys
Association Inequity Premium] incentive should be removed as her job
classification does not allow her to receive the benefit. However, I
tried to removed [sic] the “MAAINQ” from her file, but the system
does not allow me to do anything. Can you look in to [sic] it in
addition to the split file distribution in her records that should
also be removed?

SFDAO payroll records
[[link removed]]
show that, from January 2004 to early May 2005, then-District Attorney
Harris apparently was paid for working for 8 hours of “regular”
pay per day and 8 hours of pay classified as “04U1.” (04U1 appears
to be an internal accounting code representing the “Inequity
Premium” incentive she received, with 04 denoting the District
Attorney.)

According to an official in the San Francisco Controller’s Office,
this “inequity premium” is paid to senior attorneys in the San
Francisco government and consists of an additional payment of one to
three percent of the attorneys’ base salary, according to the
provisions of a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the city
and county of San Francisco.

On January 3, 2002, while serving as deputy city attorney for San
Francisco, Harris filed a “Payroll Problem Description” form
[[link removed]]
saying she was paid for 40 hours one week when she should have been
paid for 80 hours. Harris requested an additional payment for that
week of $2,684.

On October 25, 2019, we submitted a follow-up CPRA request to the
district attorney’s office, seeking additional communications about
the improper payments Harris received, as well as records reflecting
the total amount of the improper payments, any reimbursements she made
and any disciplinary actions taken against her as a result. To date,
we have not received the additional records -- not even an
acknowledgement from the district attorney’s office of our follow-up
request.

This certainly raises a few questions about Senator Harris’s time as
a prosecutor.

SOROS GROUPS MUST MAKE ANTI-PROSTITUTION PLEDGE TO GET U.S. FUNDS

So rules the U.S. Supreme Court. What astonishes me is that not only
are U.S. taxpayers giving money to Soros’ leftwing organizations,
but his lieutenants fight in court for years for more. Our _Corruption
Chronicles_ blog is on top
[[link removed]]
of this.

In a blow to George Soros’ leftwing initiatives, the U.S. Supreme
Court has ruled that foreign affiliates of his Open Society
Foundations (OSF) are not protected by the Constitution and therefore
must abide by a congressionally mandated anti-prostitution pledge to
receive federal funding. Under a 2003 law called United States
Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act
[[link removed]],
the U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars to combat AIDS globally,
and a chunk of the cash flows into OSF coffers. Under the measure
organizations that receive American taxpayer dollars to fight HIV/AIDS
abroad must adopt policies opposing sex trafficking and prostitution.
Leftist groups legally challenged the rule years ago, claiming that it
violated their First Amendment right to free speech. In 2013 the
Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the policy requirement infringed on
the American groups’ constitutionally protected freedom of speech.

The decision only applies to American organizations however, so an OSF
affiliate called Alliance for Open Society International, which is
handsomely funded by Uncle Sam, has engaged in litigation for more
than a decade and a half to obtain the same exemption. The Soros group
sued for permanent injunctive relief, and a New York District Court
ruled in its favor before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit affirmed. In a 5-3 ruling, the Supreme Court recently reversed
the appellate court decision, determining that foreign affiliates of
U.S.-based groups that get federal dollars to combat HIV/AIDS abroad
are not protected under the Constitution. “In short, plaintiffs’
foreign affiliates are foreign organizations, and foreign
organizations operating abroad have no First Amendment rights,”
according to the ruling
[[link removed]],
written
for the majority by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Because the foreign Soros
groups possess no First Amendment rights, applying the
anti-prostitution policy requirement is not unconstitutional, the
decision further points out, stating that under American
constitutional law, foreign citizens outside U.S. territory do not
possess rights under the Constitution.

Congress included the important policy in its landmark measure to
combat HIV/AIDS globally because it determined that prostitution and
sex trafficking are additional causes and factors in the spread of the
deadly virus. Federal lawmakers also wrote in their legislation, which
has helped save 17 million lives, that prostitution and sex
trafficking are degrading to women and children. “No funds made
available to carry out this Act, or any amendment made by this Act,
may be used to provide assistance to any group or organization that
does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex
trafficking,” the law states. Leftist groups receiving federal funds
assert that condemning prostitution and sex trafficking interferes
with their efforts to help those with HIV/AIDS because it creates a
stigma. The government’s anti-prostitution pledge “falsely casts
sex workers as part of the problem rather than acknowledging their
important role in developing and implementing successful
HIV/AIDS-prevention strategies,” according to an OSF publication
[[link removed]]
released years ago.

The recent Supreme Court ruling was a “blow to free speech and
public health,” according to a statement
[[link removed]]
issued by Soros’ OSF. It quotes OSF President Patrick Gaspard saying
that “the Supreme Court upheld the U.S. government’s quest to
impose its harmful ideological agenda on U.S. organizations and
restrict their right to free speech.” He continues. “The
Anti-Prostitution Pledge compromises the fight against HIV by impeding
and stigmatizing efforts to deliver health services. Condemnation of
marginalized groups is not a public health strategy.” The statement
claims that research has repeatedly found that moral rejection and
criminalization of sex work creates an environment where sex workers
are more vulnerable to violence and abuse and consequently at greater
risk of contracting HIV. “These issues are heightened in the context
of COVID-19, when sex workers face financial devastation that further
contributes to these disproportionate health and safety risks,” the
OSF writes, circling back to blast the Supreme Court ruling because it
“will prohibit critical organizations from providing services and
support to sex workers who are too often left out of—or are
antagonized by—government responses to the pandemic.”

Note that the chief of Soros’ organization calls rejection of sex
trafficking and prostitution a “harmful ideological agenda.”

UNIVERSITIES AND GOVERNMENTS: PEDDLING INFLUENCE AND STEALING SECRETS

We have been at the forefront in uncovering and reporting China’s
ubiquitous efforts to steal secrets from our scientists and
institutions. Micah Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, offers
a comprehensive look
[[link removed]]
at this onslaught in this _Investigative Bulletin_:

Judicial Watch last month sued the U.S. Department of Education for
records of money funneled from foreign governments to American
colleges and universities. The numbers are big—billions of
dollars—and difficult to pin down, despite federal reporting
requirements. The foreign governments often are U.S. adversaries. What
are they after?

In some instances, professors are pawns in long running games of
technological theft. That’s the case of part-time UCLA Professor
Yi-Chi Shih, convicted
[[link removed]]
in Los Angeles in 2019 of trying to steal sensitive microchip
technology and ship it to China, where it could be used for fighter
jets and missiles.

In other cases, foreign governments—and the Chinese government in
particular—are playing a subtler game, attempting to absorb
intellectual property without outright theft. That appears to be the
case of Harvard Professor Charles Lieber, indicted
[[link removed]]
in June for allegedly making false statements about his work for Wuhan
University of China. Lieber is the former chair of Harvard’s
Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department; he’s a leader in the
revolutionary field of nanotechnology—the ability to manipulate
atoms and molecules across a wide variety of scientific and industrial
platforms. Wuhan of course lately is famous as the original source of
Covid-19, but Lieber’s arrest has no connection to the virus.

But something big was going on at Wuhan. The indictment notes that
from 2012 through 2015, Lieber was paid $50,000 per month, plus
$158,0000 in living expenses, plus an award of $1.5 million to set up
a research lab. At roughly the same time, he was taking in $15 million
in research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the
Defense Department for his work at Harvard.

What did the Chinese want for their money? It seems clear: they wanted
to know what Lieber knew—what he was producing for the Americans.

The American grants required disclosure of all research support,
financial conflicts of interest, and foreign collaboration. The
indictment alleges that Lieber lied to U.S. authorities about his
affiliation with Wuhan University and the Chinese “Thousand Talents
Program.”

The Justice Department noted in charging Lieber that the Thousand
Talents Program is “one of the most prominent Chinese talent
recruitment plans designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate
high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific
development, economic prosperity and national security.” The program
seeks “to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring
their knowledge and experience to China, and they often reward
individuals for stealing proprietary information.”

China also seeks influence on American campuses through its Confucius
Institutes programs. According to a recent investigative report
[[link removed]]
in
the Washington Free Beacon, the Beijing-sponsored Chinese language and
culture programs appear on more than 80 U.S. campuses and have
funneled tens of millions of dollars to U.S. universities. The exact
dollar figures are unknown, although federal regulations require
disclosure by the universities.

Judicial Watch is suing the Department of Education
[[link removed]]
to
get to the bottom of the foreign money question. The sums are not
small. Three universities that did report Confucius Institute
funding—Michigan, Maryland, and Emory—received more than $30
million, the Free Beacon noted.

“Policymakers and education experts alike have long warned that
Confucius Institutes might be a conduit for Chinese influence on
American campuses that could restrict academic freedom and promote a
distorted account of Chinese history and culture that favors the
Chinese Communist Party,” the Free Beacon noted. “Senate and
federal investigations have corroborated some of those concerns.”

Judicial Watch also is probing Qatar’s connection to American
education. The Persian Gulf monarchy, an inconsistent American ally
and sometimes purveyor of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda, has
given $1 billion to American universities since 2011. The Zachor Legal
Institute, a think tank and advocacy group that investigates
anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activities, started asking questions
about the origins of Qatari influence at Texas A&M University.
That’s when entities connected to the Middle East monarchy teamed up
with Texas A&M and the powerhouse law firm Squire Patton Boggs to
crush a Freedom of Information Act request about Qatari financing.
Judicial Watch is helping Zachor fight back. Read more about the case
here
[[link removed]].


According to one estimate, at least $6.5 billion has moved from
authoritarian regimes into the coffers of American academe,
“primarily from Chinese and Middle Eastern sources.” That’s from
a letter to ranking members on several House committees from the U.S.
Education Department’s general counsel. The letter notes that
Education Department investigations into “Chinese, Middle Eastern,
and Russian foreign sources” are underway.

The website Campus Reform first reported the letter
[[link removed]].
Campus Reform also reports
that Education Department investigations have been launched into
possible undisclosed foreign ties at Harvard and Yale. According to
the website, the Education Department has asked Harvard and Yale “to
disclose any funding they may have received from China, Iran, Qatar,
and Saudi Arabia.”

Until next week …




[Contribute]
[[link removed]]


<a
href="[link removed]"
target="_blank"><img alt="WU01"
src="[link removed]"
style="width:100%; height:auto;" /></a>

[32x32x1]
[[link removed]]

[32x32x2]
[[link removed]]

[32x32x3]
[[link removed]]

[32x32x3]
[[link removed]]

Judicial Watch, Inc.
425 3rd St Sw Ste 800
Washington, DC 20024

202.646.5172



© 2017 - 2020, All Rights Reserved
Manage Email Subscriptions
[[link removed]]
|
Unsubscribe
[[link removed]]

View in browser
[[link removed]]