A bail fund promoted by Democrat vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) reportedly helped an alleged child rapist get out of jail over the summer.
Harris solicited donations from her millions of followers on Twitter for the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF), which has helped numerous allegedly violent criminals post bail. As of Friday morning, the link directed users to a landing page that featured Harris on the campaign trail and asked the users to donate to the fund.
Daily Caller News Foundation investigative reporter Andrew Kerr highlighted in a report the case of the alleged child rapist:
Timothy Wayne Columbus, 36, faces up to 30 years in prison for allegedly sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl in 2015, court records show. He was released from a Minneapolis jail in early July on $75,000 bail, according to jail records.
One day after his release, Columbus signed a document asking the court to return any refunded bail to the MFF, indicating that the fund played a role in securing his release from jail, a court document obtained by the DCNF shows.
Minnesota prosecutors provided graphic details of Columbus’s alleged sexual assault of the eight-year-old girl in her mother’s home, records reviewed by the DCNF show.
“Victim stated ‘Tim’ laid her on the couch and held her down as he unbuckled his pants and pulled down her pants. Victim stated he then ‘put his thing inside me,’” the statement of probable cause read.
“Victim stated ‘Tim’ told her not to tell anyone and continued to penetrate her,” the statement added.
The DCNF noted that Columbus was already a registered sex offender due to a separate prior incident.
The report highlighted other shocking instances where the fund bailed out people accused of serious crimes:
- MFF paid $350,000 in cash to get a twice-convicted rapist released from jail who was facing kidnapping and sexual assault charges.
- MFF helped bail out a man accused of breaking into a 71-year-old woman’s home and violently attacking her. The suspect was charged with burglary and 1st-degree assault.
- MFF helped a 33-year-old man get out of jail after he was arrested for allegedly beating a robbing a man who was leaning on a cane. The suspect is accused of kicking and punching the victim while the victim was on the ground. The suspect is alleged to have stomped on the victim’s head.
Harris’ promotion of the controversial bail fund group comes after she supported making bail more expensive when she was San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004.
“On a daily basis, the work I have to do and where I have to put my mind in terms of my priorities is on things like sitting down with Russ [Guintini] my chief assistant and talking with him about the fact we are going to change the bail schedule in San Francisco,” Harris said. “We are in the process of asking the bench, the judiciary, to reevaluate the fact that we require people who have been arrested to pay a lot less than other counties.”
Harris said that criminals were coming to the area because it was “cheaper” for them to commit crimes there since bail was less expensive.
“The San Francisco Chronicle reported in June 2004 that following a ‘nudge from the district attorney’s office,’ the court decided it would be ‘doubling, tripling and even quadrupling bail’ for people arrested on weapons-related charges,” The Free Beacon reported. “A look at the bail schedules in 2010, the last year Harris was district attorney, show bail was set at thousands of dollars for minor offenses, e.g., $5,000 for petty theft.”