In the world of shady business dealings spearheaded by political clout, you’d think Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, would take the cake.
But it appears that a close family member of Kamala Harris is following in a similar path.
Meet Tony West, Kamala Harris’ brother in law.
In 2009, West took over the Justice Department’s Civil Division, the division that litigates and settles lawsuits and is intended to provide oversight into matters of government settlements.
However, a report from the New York Post indicates that West’s deputy emailed colleagues asking “can you explain to Tony the best way to allocate some money toward an organization of our choosing?”
According to the report, settlements potentially became the way of paying off political allies.
According to an investigative report by The New York Times, in late 2010, after a Supreme Court victory, DOJ lawyers were on the cusp of winning a decade-long fight against discrimination claims by 91 Hispanic and female farmers.
That’s when West intervened and, as The New York Times put it, “engineered a stunning turnabout.”
The DOJ agreed to a $1.33 billion settlement which included thousands of farmers who had never claimed bias.
The deal was made over the “vehement objections” of the department’s career lawyers.
Per the Times report, a government statistical expert noted: “‘If they had gone to trial, the government would have prevailed . . . It was just a joke. . . . I was so disgusted. It was simply buying the support of the Native Americans.’”
The Times’s investigative report described West’s settlement as a “runaway train, driven by racial politics . . . and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees.”
The projected settlement size ballooned to over $4.4 billion as additional plaintiffs were added, including Native American farmers.
Under West’s leadership, the Times report also said that his team added increasingly aggressive provisions requiring the institutions to make nearly a billion dollars in mandatory donations to Democrat-supporting activist groups.
Donations were given double credit against required targets, incentivizing these payments over direct relief to victims of the housing crises.
West’s team specifically structured the terms to ensure that they would benefit only their political allies while leaving conservative groups ineligible.
An internal email shows West deputies rewording a settlement’s donation provisions to ensure the bank could not select a “conservative” property rights organization as a recipient.
Let’s play connect the dots here.
According to the report, Harris, who was California’s attorney general at the time West was in charge, was an active participant, cosigning many agreements for her state.
And, the Department agreed to pay $2 million to FBI Agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page for releasing anti-Trump texts to Congressional investigators worried about political bias.
The pair claimed a violation of the Privacy Act, but the messages were sent on their government-issue phones which contain clear banner warnings that users lack any reasonable expectation of privacy, according to the report.
According to the report, West is rumored to be Harris’s White House counsel-in-waiting should she win the presidential election.
Is this Hunter Biden 2.0?