-When you were attorney general,
you opposed legislation that would have required your office
to investigate fatal shootings involving police officers.
Why did you oppose that bill?
-So, I did not oppose the bill.
I had a process, when I was attorney general,
of not weighting in on bills and initiative,
because as attorney general, I had a responsibility
for writing the title and summary.
-Senator Harris had a CNN Town Hall event.
At one point, Tapper is delving into her tenure
as California's attorney general,
and that's sort of a tough position to be in as a Democrat,
particularly, because as the attorney general,
you are in charge of the well-being
and the professional development
and the success of all the police officers in the state.
And, on the other hand, the base voters of the Democratic Party
were really seizing on the issues of police use of force
around the same time that Harris was in office.
One of the criticisms that has been leveled against her
was that she never took a position a bill
to require an independent investigation
when there's a fatal shooting by police officers.
This is the issue when you talk about Ferguson,
when you talk about Eric Garner,
when you talk about any number of black men,
usually, who are unarmed, who are shot by police officers.
There is often an accountability gap
and the results that happen when you investigate these things.
Harris did not take a position on the bill,
and Tapper asked about it --
"Why didn't you take a position on this bill?
Why did you oppose it?"
And Harris said, "Actually, I didn't oppose it.
My job as attorney general meant that I had to write
some pieces of the legislation --
the title and the summary.
And so my process was not to comment
and not to take a position."
But you look at the website for the California attorney general,
and we found, like, 20 news releases or more
where she was taking a position,
either in favor or against some kind of measure
that was in the legislature.
So, it didn't add up to us, and we checked with them,
and what they said was, "Okay.
So, she misheard Jake Tapper's question,
and she gave a response that was not apt."
As it is, California has local district attorneys investigate,
you know, when there's a shooting.
Harris, herself, was the former district attorney
for San Francisco.
And so she said I was concerned that, you know,
those district attorneys are accountable to local voters.
The voters can make a change here
if something happens that they don't like,
and it's not as easy to make that change, you know,
if you sort of shift this process over
to the state attorney general.
Her staff -- they walk you through all the nuance,
and it adds up, you know, what they're saying.
But it's still worth fact checking,
because this town hall was one of her first big exposures
as a presidential candidate.