Kamala Harris Campaign Gave $500K to Al Sharpton’s Nonprofit Weeks Before Glowing Interview

Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign donated $500,000 to Al Sharpton’s nonprofit organization just weeks before the anti-Semitic MSNBC host—who once said that “diamond merchant” Jews have the “blood of innocent babies” on their hands—conducted a friendly interview with Harris.

The campaign’s remittance to Sharpton’s National Action Network was part of a flurry of donations—$5.4 million in all—to black and Latino advocacy groups that seem aimed at winning Harris support from those constituencies. Harris’s campaign gave two payments of $250,000 to National Action Network on Sept. 5 and Oct. 1, according to campaign finance records.

On Oct. 3, Sharpton aired a video of Harris wishing him happy birthday on his MSNBC weekend show, PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton. “Happy birthday, Rev,” Harris said, using Sharpton’s nickname. “You have been over all of your years such an extraordinary leader. You have been a voice of truth, a voice of conscience.”

Sharpton, 70, conducted a glowing interview with Harris on Oct. 20 in which he touted her “extraordinary historic campaign” while referring to Trump as “hostile and erratic.” His questions lined up closely with messages that Harris sought to highlight on the campaign trail. Sharpton addressed concerns among black voters—especially black men—about Harris’s record as a prosecutor in California, where she was given the nickname “Kamala the Cop.” Sharpton brought up Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, and one of Harris’s personal heroes, to put Harris’s candidacy in historical perspective. Sharpton asked Harris whether men who opposed her were “misogynistic.”

Sharpton did not disclose payments from the Harris campaign during either segment with the candidate. {snip}

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Team Harris donated to the National Urban League ($2 million), the Black Economic Alliance ($150,000), and Black Church PAC ($150,000). The campaign gave donations to lesser-known groups like the Haitian Ladies Fund ($30,000) and International Free and Accepted Modern Masons ($150,000), a black freemasons organization, according to campaign finance disclosures.  {snip} Vote to Live Action Fund, which received $275,000 from the Harris campaign, launched a $4 million initiative in October to pressure black men to vote. Harris spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an initiative to appeal to black church voters. {snip}

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