Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, uncovered multiple notable details while investigating Vice President and Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris’ connection to the Jamal Trulove case.
Trulove was wrongfully convicted in 2010 on a first-degree murder charge in San Francisco during the time Harris was serving as San Francisco District Attorney.
The prosecutor working under Harris at the time, then-Assistant Attorney Linda Allen, heavily relied on testimony from one individual who claimed to witness Trulove murdering another man but was watching the street from her second-story window from a significant distance.
A California appeals court overturned Trulove’s conviction in 2014. He was then retried in 2015 and acquitted.
In 2016, Trulove sued San Francisco and received a $13.1 million settlement for his wrongful imprisonment.
In reviewing Trulove’s story, Pappert pointed out how multiple staff members under Harris’ leadership as district attorney seem to have hit “brick walls” or “gone dark” in their careers upon working for the now-vice president.
“Linda Allen seemed to have a great career before she went to work for Kamala Harris and prosecuted [Trulove’s] case. She seemed to be an up-and-comer in California, especially as a public lawyer. But when this case happened, she seemed to have been sort of thrown under the bus. She wound up being let go not long after. She, in 2020, surfaced as an attorney…but she didn’t last very long. A couple months before, media articles started saying, ‘I can’t believe you hired this woman, this is the woman responsible for the Jamal Trulove fiasco,’” he said.
“And she seems to have either left or been let go. In 2021, she allowed her law license to go inactive, and this was during a period where I believe she was still having complaints filed against her due to her actions in the Trulove case,” Pappert explained on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Pappert also identified Larry Wallace, another individual who worked for Harris when she was San Francisco’s district attorney. Wallace also seemed to have hit a “brick wall” in his career after working for Harris.
“It is an interesting pattern with Kamala Harris when people in her, not that ancient of history, seem to have gone dark. So this individual, Larry Wallace, is now retired or so says his online profiles, but he continues to coach basketball. So we’re trying to get in touch with him. I would say it is interesting that he was, I believe, a 16 year police veteran. He then worked for the Department of Justice He then worked for Kamala Harris, and it wasn’t until working for Kamala Harris that his career seemed to meet a brick wall,” Pappert said.
Regarding the Trulove case, Pappert went on to point out that all scenarios in which Harris may have been involved in the case reflect negatively on her as a leader.
“The real question here is: Was Kamala essentially abandoning her job duties and allowing this office and the people working in it to operate without her oversight? Or was she directly involved in this, and therefore knew what Linda Allen was doing that was apparently improper in this case? I think those are the two options,” Pappert explained.
“Either Kamala Harris is a leader who doesn’t keep track of what her people are doing, or she’s a leader who potentially instructs her people to do the wrong thing. Either way, I don’t think we want that person to be in the Oval Office,” Pappert added.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.