Kamala Team Responds To Allegations In Report

Well, talk about a headache for the Harris campaign. With the 2024 election sprinting toward the finish line, Vice President Kamala Harris has her hands full trying to win over swing states and fend off a strong challenge from Donald Trump.

But just as she’s trying to push her message of change and progress, a scandal involving her husband, Doug Emhoff, threatens to derail the whole operation. Allegations of inappropriate behavior from Emhoff’s time at the high-powered law firm Venable have surfaced, and they don’t exactly paint a flattering picture of the man Harris has marketed as a supportive, feminist partner.

The accusations are detailed and damaging. Former colleagues at Venable claim that Emhoff fostered a toxic atmosphere, organizing exclusive men-only cocktail parties and allegedly retaliating against female staff who didn’t play along with his flirtations. One particularly damning story comes from a former staffer who described an incident where Emhoff allegedly berated a female partner with an expletive-laden tirade, then bragged about “putting her in her place” to his male peers.

Others accuse him of favoritism, suggesting that female colleagues who didn’t engage in his banter found themselves missing out on high-profile cases. This is a long way from the image of a humble, “second gentleman” that the Harris team has tried to promote.

Then there’s the 2019 lawsuit alleging sex discrimination in the Los Angeles office that Emhoff managed. While Emhoff wasn’t directly named as a defendant, the suit specifically called out a pattern of problematic behavior, including the hiring of a so-called “unqualified” legal secretary who reportedly had more in common with a modeling agency than with a law office. It’s hardly the kind of history that fits with Harris’s campaign narrative of equality and empowerment, and these new revelations could make it tough for her to maintain credibility on those issues.

And let’s not forget, this isn’t the first time Emhoff’s personal life has made headlines. Back in August, tabloids revealed that he’d been unfaithful during his first marriage and fathered a child with his daughter’s teacher, who also worked as the family nanny. Emhoff tried to do some damage control, admitting to the affair in a carefully crafted statement, but the timing couldn’t be worse. These scandals throw a wrench into the Harris campaign’s efforts to sell a “fresh start” after Joe Biden’s exit from the race, especially since the affair was apparently known to Biden’s vetting committee back in 2020.

For a campaign that’s already struggling to define what it would actually change from the Biden era, this controversy is like a gift to the Trump camp. With the former president and Harris running neck-and-neck, voters are likely to have questions about why the vice president is keeping such close company with a man accused of behavior that, at best, seems tone-deaf to the very gender issues she claims to champion.

As Harris attempts to distance herself from the baggage of the Biden administration, she now has to answer for the skeletons in her own backyard—ones that threaten to make her message of progress look more like a hollow promise. And in a race this close, that could be the difference between victory and defeat.