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Examining the Presidential candidates in light of Biblical teachings
By Sandy Szwarc, BSN, RN, retired emeritus
© Szwarc 2024
“For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad…for he is God’s servant for your good.
But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God,
an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” – Romans 13:3-4
“They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also
bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them “ – Romans 2:15
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.” − Matthew 5:9
“Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” − Psalm 82:4
It was surprising to learn that the Bible has clear instruction for civil leaders in what they must do as servants of God, as well as our role in examining our leaders in light of scripture. The Bible says that the work of our leaders is to carry out punishment on wrongdoers and support the peacekeepers. I learned that Ms. Harris’ record while San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General was highly stained.
What was Ms. Harris’ promise to Americans in keeping citizens safe from crime and supporting law enforcement?
Ms. Harris’ promises were spelled out on September 9, 2019 in her plan to “transform the criminal justice system and re-envision public safety in America.“
It was not a commitment to enforce the laws as established by Congress and legislatures, acting as representatives of citizens, nor was it a commitment to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Her vision was for a “fairer and more equitable” criminal justice system.
Her plan was based on the false premise of widespread problems among police of “racial profiling, excessive force or other misconduct.” Sadly, “racial profiling” has become a slogan created by and used for decades by Soros-led progressives and media to divide the country, rather than foster understanding and unity, or bring true solutions that help all Americans.
- The subject has become fraught with taboos that have gone beyond inhibiting debate and discussion, wrote attorney Scott Johnson with the Claremont Institute. “They have fostered destructive ignorance and political exploitation.” To this day, the most objective, comprehensive and thoughtful examination of racial profiling was done in a 2015 ten-part series by attorney Johnson.
- The issue goes beyond racial differences in crime rates or higher rates of arrests, police shootings or incarcerations compared to the percentages of minorities in a population. It’s a common logical fallacy that population disparity is evidence of racial profiling. It’s not.
- Psychologists and criminologists conducted critical examinations of evidence in 16 crime rate estimates, published in Social Psychology and Personality Science. The evidence failed to support anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings by police, with only one disparity found among 144 possible tests.
- It’s a dangerous fiction that prejudiced white officers are going out and disproportionately killing black men, said John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Their extensive research of 2,699 police shootings between 2013-2015 found the more officers responding to a call, the lower the risk of a lone officer needing to use deadly force.
- As Heather MacDonald with the Manhattan Institute reported, a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police office. But, perpetuating the false racial profiling narrative means officers back off in minority neighborhoods and put law-abiding black Americans who depend on the police at greater risk.
Ms. Harris’ plan for criminal justice reform called to remove local governing of police departments by elected officials, and establish a national police department review board, double the size of the federal Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, mandate Community Oriented Policing Services to assess law enforcement professionals, institute regulations to ensure technology didn’t further “racial disparities,” and place federal guidelines on law enforcement equipment to “de-militarize police departments.”
Her lengthy plan included federal sentencing guidelines such as eliminate mandatory minimum sentences to let judges issue more lenient sentences, shorten probations and other community supervision of released convicts, legalize marijuana (based on another myth when, in actuality, there are no inmates in Federal prisons for the simple possession of marijuana), end bail, end the use of fines and fees or penalties for unpaid fines, and end the death penalty.
Ms. Harris is on record for speaking out nationally in support of the defunding the police movement. While Vice President, she and her husband have also personally repeatedly donated to an anti-police and pro-sanctuary city nonprofit calling for slashing police budgets and reducing patrols in high-crime areas, according to White House financial disclosures.
She supported the defunding of police in Los Angeles and called for Congressional action for police reform. While San Francisco DA, in 2004 she refused to seek the death penalty for a gang member who’d gunned down an officer. The poor relations between Ms. Harris and the San Francisco public defender’s office were widely reported.
As California AG, she failed to support efforts to ensure police deadly force incidents were independently investigated and instead, announced that her DOJ would take an expanded role. She issued law enforcement reform, instituting “implicit bias training” for “racist and anti-gay bias,” and formed a policing working group focused on procedural justice and training, and a ceasefire program.
After the George Floyd incident, Ms. Harris campaigned in support of a controversial bail fund, helping it reach over $41.6 million in donations that were used to put violent criminals back on the streets in the name of “social justice,” only to have some commit more crimes, including murder. During her 2020 campaign, she promoted the organization, Minnesota Freedom Fund, after the city was being burned down and looted by protestors. The fund has paid $21.2 million in cash bails and $4.8 million for immigration bonds, freeing 2,537 accused criminals from pre-trial detention and letting 463 immigrants avoid detention since 2016.
She was called out, by liberal media, for blatant falsehoods she posted while campaigning for President in 2019, trying to build the systemic racism story and case for “racial equity in our justice system.” She and Elizabeth Warren had both written that Michael Brown had been shot and killed by a white police officer and the killing was racially motivated murder. The lie was so outrageous, even an Obama administration investigation found the story false. Since Day One in office as VP, she and Biden have focused executive actions for Blacks and racial equity.
Every candidate has some bad to go with the good in their record, acknowledged Branko Marcetic, a staff writer with Jacobin, a far left socialist publication. However, Ms. Harris’ record is defined by flip-flopping policies that undercut her proclaimed vision, and empty statements, such as her nonexistent record on drug reform while AG, he reported. In reshaping “California’s criminal justice system, Harris has something of a reputation in the state as a marginal figure on the issue.”
A civil ruler “must not acquire many horses for himself…
nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold” − Deuteronomy 17:16-17
“You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him…you shall do no injustice in court.
You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great” − Lev. 19:13-15
“You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.” – Leviticus 19:11
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” – Exodus 20:16
Ms. Harris’ years of prosecutorial abuses and epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct while San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General were widely reported throughout California.
A Superior Court judge concluded that DA Harris’s office had failed in its constitutional duty to inform of problems surrounding a cocaine-skimming scandal at the state crime lab that had resulted in the police shutting down the crime lab and led to the dismissal of 600 drug cases. The judge determined Ms. Harris had been informed of the problems but had kept it hidden from the defense and violated the defendants constitutional rights.
Her record of working with law enforcement and being tough on crime is fraught with controversy. As California AG, Ms. Harris was condemned by the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee for failing to inform the public that Proposition 47 reduced certain drug and property offenses to misdemeanors and restricted DNA collection and law enforcement’s ability to solve serious crimes.
As AG, Ms. Harris told media during a high-profile murder trial, in which eight people had been murdered, that she knew there was misconduct in the Orange County DA’s office but refused to launch an investigation. The abuses were so damning a Superior Court Judge disqualified the entire DA’s 250-lawyer office and her office was then compelled to launch an investigation. She stalled the investigation to let charges drop against the unconstitutional jailhouse snitch program that tainted more than a dozen criminal cases, including murder. A 2015 investigation chronicled the prosecutorial failures and cover-up tied to the misuse of jailhouse informants by county prosecutors.
The California Superior Court investigation found rampant prosecutorial abuses (falsifying reports, destroying investigation notes and eye witness statements, lying, etc.) by AG Harris “so pervasive and egregious, so corrupt and tainted” that he terminated the Cal Fire wildfire case and administered sanctions. In the course of that case, it was discovered $3.66 million in state funds had been diverted to a secret slush fund by Cal Fire employees, a felony under state law. AG Harris refused to investigate.
The California Court of Appeals found AG Harris to again be the problem behind “outrageous government misconduct” and her staff of falsifying a defendant’s confession transcript and adding two lines to the “evidence” to threaten charges carrying a life sentence. It resulted in the disqualification of the defense counsel and dismissal of an indictment completely. “Undaunted by the criminal conduct of a state prosecutor, or the district court’s opinion, Ms. Harris [then] appealed the decision dismissing the indictment.“
Even her Senate campaign was marred by a history of lavish misspending of campaign funds on herself to support her “diva lifestyle.”
After elected was she a more accountable public servant? GovTrack.us, which tracks legislative actions by all members of Congress, stated she missed 31.2% of roll call votes, 13-times worse than the median 2.4% over the lifetime records of senators. They also rated her ideology and leadership as extremely far left, with only three Democrat legislators more extreme, and her being significantly further left than even Senators Feinstein or Warren.
I couldn’t figure out how a prosecutor could repeatedly have had such a dreadful track record of failing to protect public safety, allowing criminals to escape prosecution, charging illegals and gang member murderers with lighter sentences, not supporting the police, not supporting Federal laws, and on and on… Then, I started putting the pieces together.
It turns out, Ms. Harris was the original Soros prosecutor, Washington Times reported. Remember the scandal that was exposed several years ago about how Soros has been funding radical social justice prosecutors across the nation? He was ensuring their elections by paying for as much as 90% of their campaign costs, sponsoring programs, free trips and forums; and coordinating amicus briefs to influence criminal cases and judicial policies.
- The Legal Defense Fund documented 75 Soros prosecutors were currently in office as of June 2022 in a damning report called Justice for Sale. Its investigation found these corrupted prosecutors were intentionally placed in communities with the largest numbers of murders and represented more than a third of all violent and property crimes in the country. Soros was using a series of shell organizations, affiliates and pass-through committees to steer campaign donations and provide gravitas and perks to preferred prosecutors. Soros has been investing massive sums of his $23 billion fortune to transform our criminal justice system and influence our elections for well over a decade. In just four years, four Soros prosecutors alone had received $13 million from Soros, according to the LELDF report.
- Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center was also reporting Soros’ dark money spending for some of the most controversial district attorney campaigns in the country, how Soros’ and affiliated political action committees work to influence ballot issues, as in Texas, and how he’s been financing a revolution in criminal justice
- Soros prosecutors were abolishing bail and so light on crime that Soros has been attributed with being behind the U.S. crime wave, the New York Post reported. There was a 30% increase in homicides in 2020 – the largest single year spike since the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report has been recording crime statistics 60 years ago. The FDA report also found a 24% decrease in arrests across the country.
That information also helped explain the unusual close relationship being reported between Ms. Harris and Alex Soros, George Soros’ son who recently took the reigns of the Soros dynasty.
- Fox News documented on June 6, 2023 that Alex Soros had personal access at the White House. Visitor logs had shown at least 17 visits since 2021. Alex had even tweeted, boasting of his visit with “Madame Vice President Kamala Harris.”
- The White House logs also showed that Alex had been at her private residence on May 31, 2023 along with eight other prominent donors, signing in at 4pm and socializing until midnight.
- By September 3rd of last year, the reported number of personal visits Alex had made to the White House were up to 21.
- On July 21, 2024, Biden posted on X his decision to drop out of the Presidential race at 1:13pm. Just one hour and 21 minutes later, at 2:34pm, Alex Soros posted a photo with himself and Ms. Harris voicing his support for Kamala and issuing a call to unite around her.
- After Soros spoke, the world’s wealthiest billionaires and other members of the World Economic Forum quickly responded. Donations poured in from billionaires and more than 100 ultra-wealthy venture capitalists. Elite WEF members, such as Mark Cuban, have actively been campaigning in support.
- In 2019, the Federal Election Commission reported that more billionaires had donated to Ms. Harris for President that any other Democrat running. This election is no different, with Financial Times reporting $361,000 in donations in August and $380,000 in ads were already booked from September to election day. Those connections would prove to be especially relevant as my research continued.
President Trump, in contrast, demonstrated his support for law enforcement and aggressively prosecuted criminals. Police officers and law enforcement agents were increasingly becoming targets of violence as violent protests and rioting swept the country after the death of George Floyd. He got the endorsement of the National Association of Police Organizations and the country’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police with 355,000 members.
Fraternal Order of Police President said: “During his first four years, President Trump has made it crystal clear that he has our backs…President Trump is committed to keeping our communities and families safe.”
President Trump made a promise to “make America safe again,” saying he would put the safety, interests and well-being of citizens first. “I will fight for you with every breath in my body. And I will never ever let you down,” he said in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 2017. By his actions, he showed those commitments to the best of his ability to be true.
The election discernment journey took a surprising turn as I learned of Jesus’ strong regard for borders and national sovereignty. Part 7 tested how the candidates’ actions held up to those Biblical commandments.
