Viral video misleads with edited video of Kamala Harris ‘swipe of pen’ speech

Vice President Kamala Harris’ record as a California prosecutor has come into renewed focus as she runs for the White House. Harris touts her record of prosecuting violent criminals and her Back On Track initiative, which aimed to reduce reoffending.

But a viral video appears to show her speaking boastfully about how she could ruin lives as a prosecutor. "Power hungry Kamala Harris describing how she can ruin lives with the 'swipe of a pen,’" an Aug. 16 X post said. The X post included a video of Harris.

"I learned that with the swipe of my pen, I could charge someone with the lowest-level offense, and because of the swipe of my pen, that person could be arrested," she said in a 2019 New Hampshire speech.

Harris also listed consequences, including potential lost work, jail time and costly attorney fees for the person charged. "Weeks later, I could dismiss the charges but their life would forever be changed. So, I learned at a very young age, the power," the video ends abruptly. 

We saw a similar video on Facebook with text on the video that said: "How can anyone trust her with executive power."

The Facebook video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Threads, and Instagram.)

But the viral is misleading and omits important context. We reviewed the 2019 speech given in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at an annual banquet by the state’s Democratic Party members. Harris was then running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Featured Fact-check

Social Media

stated on October 22, 2024 in social media posts

“Schaumburg, Illinois not recording votes, just putting votes ‘in a box.’”

We found that rather than bragging about her prosecutorial power, Harris was discussing the importance of leaders using power responsibly because of the potential for harm if power is misused. She said that it was something she realized early in her 20s when she started work as a prosecutor.

In her 2019 speech, Harris sought to describe then-President Donald Trump as using his power irresponsibly. The viral clip ends before a crucial part of her speech.

"And I was just a lowly deputy DA," she went on to say to laughter from the audience. "Yet we have a person in the White House who holds the office of president of the United States, who does not fully, or even partially, understand what it means to have power," she said of Trump. "When you truly understand what it means to be powerful, you understand that the greatest measure of your strength is not who you beat down, it is who you lift up."

Harris had used the "swipe of my pen" rhetoric before. In 2010, she described prosecutorial power in similar terms while running to become California’s attorney general, at an event organized by Google. At the time, she was San Francisco's district attorney.

After talking about her pen swipe’s power, she added: "It is an incredible amount of power, and you want to make sure that the people who have this kind of power are taking seriously, the responsibility, in terms of understanding as much as anything the impact on the people who will be affected by that."

PolitiFact has previously fact-checked claims about Harris’ record as a prosecutor.

We rate the claim that this video shows Harris describing ruining lives with her pen False.