WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris’ efforts to shut down “lock her up” chants Donald Trump Harris-Walz’s rallies this week may be an attempt to avoid engaging in the kind of rhetoric seen at Trump rallies in 2016.
But Harris also has a very practical reason to avoid endorsing this type of language: Any comments or endorsements he makes could further delay or complicate Trump’s pending federal criminal charges. This includes Special Counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 and 2020 election interference case.
If Harris wins the election in November, Trump’s Jan. 6 case — though weakened by the Supreme Court — will still go to trial. As a sitting vice president in the administration that appointed the attorney general to oversee the case, any comments Harris makes about the trial could be fodder for the former president’s lawyers to argue in court that his comments violated Trump’s due process rights. This includes any suggestion that locking Trump up is a clear goal (as Trump repeatedly said about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign).
When chants of “Lock him up” broke out at a Harris rally in Wisconsin this week, he told supporters, “Let’s let the courts handle it,” and used a similar line when the same chant broke out at another rally. . “Our job is to beat him in November,” he said.
Harris, a former prosecutor himself, has been cautious in his references to a series of civil and criminal cases Trump has faced in recent years. Conscious of the influence she could have on Trump’s pending federal cases, Harris has surrounded herself with Justice Department veterans — including her brother-in-law Tony West, a former top DOJ official, and former Attorney General Eric Holder, who investigated her. vice presidential candidates.
But Harris doesn’t have the same restrictions when discussing any state and local anti-Trump cases or those that have already been convicted.
– I was elected US senator. I was elected Attorney General of the State of California. And I was a courtroom prosecutor before that,” Harris said in his first campaign speech last month, which he has since repeated. “And in those roles, I took on all kinds of perpetrators — predators who abused women, con artists who defrauded consumers, con artists who violated rules for their own benefit So hear me out: I know the type Donald Trump is.
Harris’ references — to predators who take advantage of women, scammers who rip off consumers and crooks who bend the rules for their own gain — appear to be nods to other civil or criminal cases Trump has faced, not the Jan. 6 case he’s currently facing. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll; earlier this year, a New York judge ordered Trump to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for civil fraud; and Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies in May in a case that included violating campaign finance rules and making hardship payments to an adult film actor during the 2016 campaign.
Harris, who himself came close to a pipe bomb left at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on the eve of January 6, 2021, faces a difficult task in any debate when it comes to discussions of the Capitol attack and the Trump attack. efforts to remain in office after his 2020 defeat.
He’s also likely to avoid much discussion about Trump’s handling of classified documents: Although a federal case involving his alleged mishandling of classified documents was dismissed by a Trump-appointed federal judge, the Justice Department has appealed and the case may eventually be settled.
“His campaign position is complicated by the fact that he is a member of the administration, in the same way that it would have been complicated” President Joe Bidensaid Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who now represents many of the Jan. 6 defendants. Shipley noted that Harris himself is an attorney, which would create potential ethical issues if he spoke about pending cases.
There are Department of Justice rules about communicating with the media about ongoing cases, and the DOJ has a tradition of trying to speak “within the four corners,” meaning information about ongoing cases comes from court filings, not the media. While those rules only bind the Justice Department, part of Harris’ pitch to voters is that he would respect the boundaries between the Justice Department and the White House that have existed for decades since the Watergate scandal.
When asked by NBC News why he has shut down the “lock him up” chants, the Harris campaign said in a statement that the vice president is focused on getting voters to stop Trump in November.
“Vice President Harris has a simple message: There is one way to stop Donald Trump and his harmful Project 2025 agenda, and that’s on the ballot in November,” a campaign official said.
The Trump campaign responded to a question about the chants by saying they “would be funny if Kamala Harris and Joe Biden hadn’t literally set the legal system against President Trump in an attempt to imprison him before the election.”
The Trump campaign and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department against Trump, even though the federal charges against him were brought by independent special counsel Smith, who has aggressively prosecuted both Democrats and Republicans.
During the Biden administration, the Justice Department appointed another special prosecutor, a former Trump appointee who secured the conviction of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, on gun charges. A third special counsel, a Republican who was previously nominated by Trump to be the top federal prosecutor, oversaw the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents and decided not to pursue charges.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
