Former President Donald Trump on Friday spotlighted some of Vice President Kamala Harris’s failures during her time as San Francisco’s district attorney, arguing she and the “communist left” cannot be allowed to do to America what they did to California.
Trump pointed to the failures under Harris’s tenure from 2004 to 2011 while speaking at a press conference at Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles on Friday.
“I’m here today in California with a very simple message for the American people: We cannot allow comrade Kamala Harris and the communist left to do to America what they did to California,” Trump said before going into details of Harris’s record as district attorney.
He dubbed her the “Godmother of sanctuary cities” while pointing to a pair of illegal alien murderers who were convicted of killings that occurred after they had already been arrested for other crimes when they were minors. However, San Francisco’s sanctuary city policies protected the then-juvenile criminals from being turned over to federal authorities for deportation.
The first case he pointed to was the murders of Tony Bologna and his teen sons, Michael and Matthew, in June 2008 by an illegal alien.
“One of the people that Kamala gave sanctuary city to and put in as D.A. was Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien MS-13 gang member who savagely murdered a father and his two sons after mistaking them for members of a rival gang,” Trump said.
The San Francisco Chronicle notes Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador, carried out the killings in the Excelsior District. Citing authorities familiar with his background, the outlet reported at the time that Ramos had previously been convicted of “a gang-related assault on a Muni passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman” before the June 2008 murder.
However, federal authorities were never notified of the crime because of the Juvenile Probation Department’s “policy not to consider immigration status when deciding how to deal with an offender.”
“Had city officials investigated, they would have found that Ramos lacked legal status to remain in the United States,” according to the article.
The interpretation of the policy was eventually discarded. But on July 31, 2008, just over a month after Ramos’s murder of the Bolognas, an illegal alien from Honduras named Rony Aguilar murdered a 14-year-old boy named Ivan Miranda.
“She also gave sanctuary to illegal alien Rony Aguilera, who murdered a 14-year-old boy, nearly decapitating him with a sword. He enjoyed watching this take place with a sword,” Trump said Friday.
Per the Chronicle, Aguilar was on the street in part because of the same interpretation of the city’s sanctuary city policy, according to the Chronicle, which reviewed Aguilar’s prior records after the murder but did not release them, as it would have been a crime because he was a minor:
Aguilera is the second person this year to be charged with murder in San Francisco after having been protected from possible deportation under city officials’ now-discarded interpretation of a sanctuary ordinance that barred agencies from cooperating with federal efforts to round up illegal immigrant
Trump pointed to multiple additional cases, including one where Harris’s office agreed to a plea deal of a 12-year sentence for a man who murdered his mother while high on crack.
“In one sweetheart deal, Kamala gave only 12 years to a monster known as David Taylor, who got high on crack and murdered a 65-year-old mother with a hammer and a pair of scissors,” Trump said. “He wanted to come out, and she wanted to get him out as quickly as possible.”
The plea deal for Taylor’s July 2001 murder of his mother, Altaneze Taylor, after what he admitted was a nine-day crack bender, came in December 2004, as the Chronicle documented.
Harris’s office was concerned he could wage a mental health defense, according to the outlet.
Trump also highlighted that Harris “refused to seek the death penalty for a gang member who murdered San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza during a traffic stop” in 2004.
David Hill, a gang member, shot Espinoza, 29, during the traffic stop, as the New York Post noted.
“Harris, just months into her role as district attorney, got on television three days after the killing to announce that she wouldn’t seek the death penalty — before even speaking with the heartbroken family,” according to the outlet.