New Trump PAC ad accuses Kamala Harris of a 2008 incident when she was San Francisco district attorney

You won't see this ad on TV in California, but it's everywhere in swing states. It references an incident in 2008 in which an illegal immigrant released by Kamala Harris on drug charges committed a purse snatching that resulted in the victim's skull being fractured.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has struggled to define his opponent, Kamala Harris, since Joe Biden dropped out of the race. And after Harris' very well-received speech at the party convention, that could become even more difficult.

But Trump's political action committees (PACs) are now taking over with TV ads. And KPIX reports on a new TV spot from the Make America Great Again PAC that attacks Harris over a 2008 incident in which a man was charged with drug offenses while in the country illegally. The spot is running in swing states, but not California, and can be seen below.

“I was robbed,” Amanda Kiefer, a real-life victim of a 2008 SF robbery, says in the ad. “They tried to run me over with the getaway car. They tried to kill me, right here.”

Then a narrator's voice says in a dark tone: “Amanda's attacker was an illegal drug dealer with an immigrant background who had already been arrested twice before.”

We will take issue with a couple of things in this ad. Namely, the implication that ABC News ran a headline on this story that said “Drug Trafficking Illegal Published by Kamala Harris.” That doesn’t seem like a headline ABC News would run. And wait a minuteThe story is presented as if it had appeared on July 29, 2024, at which point Harris had not yet served as San Francisco District Attorney for 23 years.

We took the liberty of finding this real ABC News article, which appeared on July 29, 2024. But its real headline is, “Victim of 2008 attack on illegal immigrant, now cited by Trump allies, lashes out at Harris.” The wording apparently comes from a Trump quote, not an ABC News headline. Trump is quoted as saying at a rally, “As district attorney in San Francisco, Kamala put an illegal immigrant who was dealing drugs in a job creation program instead of prison. Four months later, the illegal immigrant robbed a 29-year-old woman, mowed her down with an SUV, fracturing her skull and ruining her life.”

And ABC News actually looked into the story. It is essentially true that Amanda Kiefer did indeed have her purse stolen in July 2008 in Pacific Heights by 20-year-old illegal immigrant Alexander Izaguirre. He then jumped into a waiting SUV, whose driver ran over Kiefer, fracturing her skull. Izaguirre had previously been arrested on drug charges, but instead of going to jail, he was put into a work diversion program called Back on Track.

Harris has since said she regrets putting Izaguirre in the diversion program and the legal loophole that allowed him to enter. “I think we've solved the problem,” Harris told the LA Times in 2009. “So going forward, the goal is to make sure that no one gets into Back on Track who can't work legally.” (Izaguirre would not have been able to work legally because of his status as an illegal citizen.)

And what the commercial doesn't reveal is that when Izaguirre was sentenced, Harris recommended that he be deported to Honduras. That's what eventually happened.

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Image: Make America Great Again PAC