Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler spun himself dizzy on Monday as he came to Kamala Harris’s defense as he gave former Minneapolis police officer Scott Creighton three Pinocchios for his characterization of her response to the 2020 riots.
Creighton claimed in a Preserve America PAC ad that, “Four years ago, in this alley, rioters threw a brick at my face and knocked out my teeth. Why? Because I was a police officer. And what did Kamala Harris do? While America’s cities were burning, Kamala was defending peaceful protests. She raised millions to help bail rioters out of jail. And supported defunding our police, making us all less safe. Kamala Harris is dangerous.” 
Kessler began his rebuttal by first attacking Creighton’s resume, “The ad also does not mention that he was the first defense witness to testify for police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering Floyd and sentenced to 22½ years in prison.”
After six more paragraphs attacking Creighton’s credibility, Kessler finally got to his claims. After recalling that Harris’s position on peaceful protests was the same as Donald Trump's, “Robert O’Brien, Donald Trump’s national security adviser at the time, told CNN that Trump supported peaceful demonstrations, even as he pledged a crackdown on violence.”
Be that as it may, Kessler then went downhill fast. On the second part of Creighton’s statement, Kessler simply wrote, “This cannot be verified.”
Kessler then cited Harris’s tweet urging people to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund and didn’t notice how he contradicted himself, “Just weeks after Floyd’s death, it raised $35 million — in part because of tweets such as the one by Harris. The fund initially had only about $10,000 set aside to help out protesters, MFF said in a tweet.”
By this point, Kessler was fully immersed in the process of twisting himself into a logical pretzel, “Harris herself never personally bailed out anyone or had any interaction with the fund... Justin Timberlake also tweeted his support. There’s no way to know how much money was raised because of Harris’s tweet.”
Who cares? She promoted the cause; that’s all that matters. Still, Kessler didn’t see any problem in lax law enforcement, “all but three of the 170 people arrested during the protests between May 26 and June 2 were released from jail within a week. Of the 167 released, only 10 had to put up a monetary bond; in most cases, the amounts were nominal, such as $78 or $100.”
People bailed out by the MFF have gone on to commit more violent crimes.
As for the “defund the police” accusation, Kessler’s great defense was that Harris never explicitly supported the movement, she just paid lip service, “This is mostly false. Harris, a former prosecutor, never supported the ‘defund the police’ movement, though she called for ‘reimagining public safety’ in the United States. The ad cites an article in the New York Post reporting that Harris told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ that the movement posed legitimate questions about police budgets, but the Post acknowledged Harris ‘stopped short’ of backing defunding.”
Here is that article in greater context, “Vice presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris on Tuesday applauded Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to slash police funding by $150 million but stopped short of saying she backed the “defund the police” movement.”
Kessler also claimed, ‘“Defund the police’ was often misunderstood. It did not call for the outright elimination of police departments... The idea was that low-income communities would become stronger — and less in need of policing tactics — if root problems were addressed.
He then recalled Harris echoing such sentiments to The View, “We need to reimagine how we are achieving public safety in America… there is a dire need in those same cities for mental health resources, for resources going into public schools, for resources going into job training and job creation — come on. We have to be honest about this.”
In his conclusion, Kessler returned to the issue and wrote, “Finally, he says she supported the ‘defund the police’ movement. She never embraced it, instead saying the movement raised good questions about how public safety could be best achieved.”
She didn’t say she supported it, she just praised it and echoed its talking points. That’s some fact-check.
