Kamala's Way

by Dan Morain

  There, they were representing none other than David Daleiden. The cause célèbre of the antiabortion movement was fending off a suit by Planned Parenthood alleging that he violated individuals’ privacy rights and trespassed when he made his secret recordings. His legal team consisted of no fewer than sixteen lawyers and paralegals, all of them working free of charge to him.

  On November 15, 2019, a jury in a federal court in San Francisco awarded Planned Parenthood $2.2 million, finding Daleiden and his collaborators violated laws against trespassing, fraud, clandestine recording, and racketeering. Daleiden is appealing. He also has sued Harris and the state, alleging they violated his First Amendment rights.

  * * *

  As she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016, Kamala Harris never did hold a press conference to tout the case against Daleiden. Nor did she file a criminal complaint against him, even though such a filing in California would have been to her political benefit, given public attitudes supporting a woman’s right to control her own body. That was left to her successor.

  On March 28, 2017, with Harris in the Senate, Attorney General Becerra filed a criminal complaint against Daleiden and an associate for the surreptitious taping. The criminal case against Daleiden is pending. He has pleaded not guilty and contends that he was acting as a journalist seeking the truth. Daleiden has a top-notch criminal defense team. That team includes Steve Cooley, the former Los Angeles County district attorney who ran against Harris in 2010. Cooley contends Harris’s actions were corrupt because she is beholden to Planned Parenthood. Daleiden speaks out as well. “It’s pretty obvious that the reason that I alone was targeted by Kamala Harris is because I dared to criticize Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry,” Daleiden says on a well-produced video.

  Kathy Kneer retired from Planned Parenthood in July 2017. What did she think of Harris’s role?

  “I think she was cautious. Even when you met with her, she didn’t say, ‘I’m going to be on your side.’ She was neutral.”

  Harris proudly supports a woman’s right to choice. But as Kneer saw it, Harris was a professional prosecutor. That was her way.

  24 “Go Get ’Em”

  Kamala Harris had seen sexual exploitation of children when she worked as a prosecutor in Oakland and San Francisco. She used her position as California attorney general to elevate the issue. Those efforts ultimately would resonate nationally.

  “Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery,” Harris said in a report issued in 2012, her second year as attorney general. “It involves controlling a person through force, fraud, or coercion to exploit the victim for forced labor, sexual exploitation, or both.”

  The report pointed out that in the internet age, “the business of sex trafficking, in particular, has moved online.” And the report singled out “unscrupulous websites like Backpage.com.”

  Backpage was, as she and others saw it, the equivalent of an online pimp. It came to dominate the online sex trade. Anyone with a smartphone could gain access to its classified listings and order up a prostitute. It operated in 943 locations and ninety-seven countries, and its revenue exceeded $100 million a year.

  Backpage’s origin dates to alternative newspapers of the 1960s and 1970s. Like mainstream papers, alternative papers relied on classified ads for much of their revenue. In 2004, Craig Newmark disrupted that business model by offering free classified ads through his Craigslist website.

  Michael Lacey and James Larkin were running Phoenix New Times and other publications that were part of their Village Voice Media Holdings. To respond to the Craigslist threat, they created Backpage.com. Named for the back-page ads that ran in alternative newspapers, the site was a thinly veiled bazaar for prostitution. Craigslist, under pressure from law enforcement and advocacy groups, shut down its “adult” section in 2010. But Backpage was there to fill the void.

  As its revenue grew, Larkin and Lacey lived large, regularly traveling internationally and buying exclusive properties. One hilltop home with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was recently valued at $13.99 million. A five-bedroom home in St. Helena, in the heart of the Napa Valley wine region, was valued at $3.4 million.

  In August 2011, eight months after taking office, Harris was one of forty-five state attorneys general who signed a letter to Backpage’s attorney saying they were “increasingly concerned about human trafficking, especially the trafficking of minors.” Backpage.com, the law enforcement officials said, was “a hub for such activity.” The letter apparently had little if any impact. Backpage’s business continued.

  In July 2013, Harris was one of forty-nine state attorneys general who signed a letter addressed to key members of the U.S. House and Senate pointing out that the federal Communications Decency Act precluded state law enforcement authorities from carrying out their duty “to investigate and prosecute those who promote prostitution and endanger our children.” The Communications Decency Act, signed by President Clinton in 1995, was supposed to protect children from seeing online pornography. It didn’t. That’s because the Communications Decency Act has shielded Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, and the other corporations that dominate the internet from criminal and civil liability for whatever content gets posted on their sites. That immunity is fundamental to their business model.

  Backpage hid behind that same immunity. Its executives contended that they could not be held responsible for the content of the ads. In their 2013 letter to Congress, the state attorneys general cited evidence that the site was used to buy and sell children for men’s sexual gratification and for the financial gain of pimps and Backpage itself. One Florida pimp, the letter said, tattooed his name on a thirteen-year-old child’s eyelids to show that she was his property.

  In the years to come, more details would emerge about victims. A girl sold via Backpage on the East Coast was forced to perform oral sex at gunpoint, choked, and gang-raped. In 2013 and 2014, a fifteen-year-old girl sold through Backpage by her uncle and his friends for $200 an hour was raped in hotel rooms. On June 20, 2015, a girl bought and sold in Texas was murdered by a customer. He tried to cover it up by burning her body.

  “Federal enforcement alone has proven insufficient to stem the growth of internet-facilitated child sex trafficking. Those on the front lines of the battle against the sexual exploitation of children—State and local law enforcement—must be granted the authority to investigate and prosecute those who facilitate these horrible crimes,” the attorneys general said in that 2013 letter to Congress.

  Congress failed to act in 2013. Nor did Congress act the year after that, or the year after that, or the year after that. But Attorney General Harris had a plan.

  * * *

  Maggy Krell graduated from the UC Davis School of Law in 2003 and went to work as a deputy district attorney in San Joaquin County, one of the richest agricultural counties in the richest farm state in America, though one where much farmland has been plowed under for housing developments and strip malls. As a junior deputy district attorney, Krell was responsible for prosecuting prostitution cases. That meant bringing charges against young women accused of prostitution. They seemed so vulnerable. Their stories, she said, “made me sick to my stomach.” There had to be a better way.

  Krell moved to the California Department of Justice in 2005, working her way up to a unit that prosecutes complex crimes that cross county lines. Many involved mortgage fraud. Those were interesting and important. But her passion involved cases of human trafficking, specifically the sex trade. Over her years in the California Department of Justice, she helped prosecute people who ran bordellos that masqueraded as massage parlors. She brought cases against members of domestic and international gangs who found that, unlike guns or drugs, which could be sold only once, they could sell and resell girls and women. The girls and women had little if any control over their lives. “Every case had a common denominator. It was Backpage,” Krell said.

  In July 2016, Krell was kayaking with her eight-year-old son on
Donner Lake, a postcard-perfect body of water named for the Donner party of pioneers who got caught in the terrible Sierra winter of 1846–1847 and survived by cannibalizing the pioneers who had perished. Her cell phone buzzed, but the number was blocked, so Krell ignored the call.

  A few minutes later, Attorney General Harris’s chief of staff, Nathan Barankin, sent her a text imploring her to pick up her phone.

  The phone buzzed again.

  Harris was on the line.

  Krell paddled back to the dock and stepped barefoot out of the kayak. Cell reception was spotty, so she climbed a hill to hear better. Harris wanted details about a case Krell had been working on for three years. How many victims were there? Were they minors? Would they testify? What about the law, which in this case would be a particular hurdle? Krell was winded from the climb but answered as best as she could. “I was talking to another prosecutor. She got it,” Krell said. “At the end of the call, Harris said, ‘Go get ’em.’ ”

  With Attorney General Kamala Harris’s backing, Krell prepared to prosecute a case that would test the limits of California state law. She would charge the owners of Backpage.com, a $600 million corporation that used state-of-the-art technology and operated worldwide, with that oldest of vice crimes: pimping.

  * * *

  Krell had started working on the case in 2013, the result of news accounts about Backpage and reports from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which had identified hundreds of suspected instances of children being sold in California using Backpage ads.

  It didn’t take much effort to prove that Backpage was used for prostitution. She and the agents paid for two Backpage ads: one for a sofa and one for an “escort.” One Backpage reader called inquiring about the sofa. Within forty-eight hours, 803 calls came from men seeking the escort’s services.

  Under Krell’s direction, agents also invited women and girls advertised on Backpage to come to a motel room off Interstate 80 in Rocklin, a suburb northeast of Sacramento. Four women who responded were in their twenties. Two girls who arrived were fifteen, one was sixteen, and another was seventeen. One of those girls told about a fifth girl, known publicly only by the initials E.V. She was thirteen, and her picture was on Backpage. In another world, Krell imagined that E.V. would have been batting a piñata at a birthday party with friends. In the world of Backpage, E.V. was following the lead of her seventeen-year-old mentor, bringing money to their pimp. One day, the seventeen-year-old told Krell, their pimp brought them to a clothing store. The thirteen-year-old was so tiny she had to shop in the little-girls’ section.

  “We never found her,” Krell said. “I think about her all the time.”

  On behalf of the State of California, Krell filed the criminal complaint under seal at the end of September 2016, accusing Backpage’s chief executive officer, Carl Ferrer, and its principal owners, Lacey and Larkin, of multiple counts of pimping. She also filed an arrest warrant for Ferrer, Larkin, and Lacey. Authorities were waiting in October when Ferrer stepped off a flight from Amsterdam at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. Once Ferrer was in custody, they searched Backpage’s offices in Dallas.

  On October 6, 2016, a little more than a month before Election Day, California unsealed the complaint. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, whose agents helped California authorities, held a press conference announcing the arrest. Harris issued a press release but held no press conference. Nor was Harris in the Sacramento courtroom on October 12, 2016, when all three defendants were arraigned and numerous reporters, me included, were there. She rarely held press conferences after arrests, and she did not parade defendants before cameras in perp walks.

  Parents of exploited children and people who advocate on their behalf filled several pews in the courtroom that day. They had waited years to see the Backpage executives in court. Harris had done something no one else had done. In announcing the charges, Harris singled out Carissa Phelps, praising her for helping find and counsel child victims. Phelps, an attorney, tells her story of being trafficked when she was a girl in her book, Runaway Girl. “Somebody needed to start it,” Phelps said of Harris. “To have the California connection is bold. This is the home of tech.”

  * * *

  Defenders of Backpage were quick to denounce Harris, accusing her of timing the complaint to coincide with the November 8 election. Although Harris was running for the U.S. Senate, the outcome of that race was hardly in doubt. A poll taken two weeks before the arrest showed Harris ahead of Sanchez by 22 points.

  In court, Backpage executives argued that they could not be held responsible for the content of their site. The Communications Decency Act gave them immunity from state pimping laws. To buttress their argument, the defendants’ lawyers used Harris’s own words against her, as written in the July 2013 letter that she and the other state attorneys general signed urging Congress to amend the Communications Decency Act so states could prosecute websites that advertise the sale of children for sex.

  On December 9, 2016, a California state judge agreed with Backpage’s attorneys and dismissed the case. That was not its end, however. In the search of Backpage’s offices, agents had amassed a huge cache of documents detailing Backpage’s financial transactions. They used those documents to build a case showing that when major credit card companies stopped processing payments for Backpage, Backpage instructed customers to send checks to post office boxes, use cryptocurrency, or make payments to shell corporations. Backpage sought to launder money by using banks in Iceland, Hungary, and the Principality of Liechtenstein, the state alleged.

  Harris was a U.S. Senator–elect when on December 23, 2016, Krell, with the outgoing attorney general’s blessing, filed a new complaint charging all three with violating state laws that made money laundering a crime. The Backpage empire was unraveling.

  * * *

  Harris’s decision to challenge Backpage was not without political risks. Although Backpage was a rogue company, she was attacking an internet company in a state that more than any other had created the internet and was challenging protections provided by the Communications Decency Act. Some of the biggest corporate players in California and many of the state’s largest taxpayers depend on protections provided by that law. “This is a frightening abuse of power to harass a company just because Harris doesn’t like how people use that company,” one commentator wrote, “and because she and her staff can’t be bothered to do the actual law enforcement work of using that information to go after the actual lawbreakers. It’s shameful.”

  Harris was a member of the U.S. Senate on August 23, 2017, when superior court judge Lawrence G. Brown in Sacramento vindicated her decision, ruling that California could pursue money laundering charges against Larkin, Lacey, and Ferrer.

  In April 2018, Ferrer pleaded guilty to the state money laundering charges and promised to testify against his former bosses, Larkin and Lacey. As of this writing, California’s case against Larkin and Lacey is pending; they have pleaded not guilty.

  On April 9, 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix announced a ninety-three-count indictment against seven Backpage executives, accusing them of conspiracy, facilitating prostitution across state lines, and money laundering. The trial is pending, too, and each has pleaded not guilty. Ferrer is cooperating with the feds. The federal case resulted in part from the investigation done in California. “It was always a national case,” Krell said. “We needed to file it in California because no one else did.”

  Federal authorities shut down Backpage in April 2018. New sites have emerged to fill the vacuum. But they will need to be less brazen than Backpage. In April 2018, President Trump signed legislation stating that the Communications Decency Act does not provide immunity to websites that pimp children and that victims and state attorneys general can sue such sites.

  25 “I Intend to Fight”

  By October 2016, the U.S. Senate race between Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez was an afterthought. Harris had led in every poll f
or more than a year. Not that she needed it, but in the final weeks of the election, outgoing president Barack Obama gave her a final push by appearing on her behalf in a commercial that aired statewide.

  “As your senator, Kamala Harris will be a fearless fighter for the people of California every single day,” Obama told voters.

  California voters were paying far more attention to Donald Trump and his crude remarks recorded in the Access Hollywood tape, in which he talked about assaulting women, and FBI director James Comey’s letter, in which he announced that he was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

  To the extent they were watching state issues, the ballot was full of provocative initiatives. One would legalize the commercial sale of cannabis. Another would raise tobacco taxes by $2 per pack of cigarettes. A third would make it illegal for people who could not legally own guns to buy ammunition. Two others would either end the death penalty or speed up executions.

  Los Angeles Times political columnist George Skelton, who had been covering California campaigns since Pat Brown was governor, wrote a month out from the election that the Harris-Sanchez race was “drawing all the interest of a mosquito abatement board seat. California has had many compelling Senate fights in the past: Boxer–Carly Fiorina. Dianne Feinstein–Mike Huffington. Jerry Brown–Pete Wilson. Alan Cranston–Max Rafferty. But Kamala Harris–Loretta Sanchez? Snore.”