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Former Vice President Kamala Harris‘ memoir recapping her experiences on the 2024 campaign trail includes a handful of inaccuracies that opened the doors to questions about whether the former Democrat Party leader hired a fact-checker to review her personal retelling of the unprecedented election year.
Harris is currently facing blowback from Biden allies for her portrayal of the 46th president, including taking shots at his “recklessness” for launching a re-election effort as an octogenarian who had been in public office for more than 50 years, and claiming the Biden White House turned its backs on providing her coverage when negative press plagued headlines.
Outside of Biden staffers taking issue with the former VP’s personal anecdotes of the book, Harris also included a handful of inaccuracies in the memoir’s copy and has made questionable claims from the book tour, a Fox News Digital review found.
Fox News Digital asked Harris’ office if a fact-checker was hired to review the memoir or Harris’ comments while on her international book tour and did not receive a response.
‘13 marines’ were killed in botched withdrawal
Harris inaccurately claimed only U.S. Marines were killed during the Biden–Harris administration’s botched and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, omitting mention that one soldier and one Navy corpsman were among the 13 U.S. service members killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate.
Harris’ inaccuracies were included in a section of her book focused on then-President Biden failing to accurately debate Trump on his military leadership during his failed 2024 debate against Trump.
“He’s got so much material on this—Trump calling our fallen soldiers ‘suckers and losers,’” Harris wrote of what ran through her head when Biden was asked about his role as commander-in-chief.
“He managed to get off that line but had stepped on it earlier by saying no one had died in wars overseas on his watch, seeming to forget the thirteen marines who died in the bomb blast at the airport during the evacuation of Afghanistan. I’d been on Air Force Two when it happened, and we had to change our flight plan to get back to DC in the face of that tragedy. How could he overlook that day?” she wrote, expressing her surprise over the response, but misidentifying those who were all killed as members of the Marines Corps.
The Biden administration repeatedly came under fire for its handling of the Afghan withdrawal. The botched withdrawal, which included leaving military equipment worth millions of dollars in the hands of the Taliban, was viewed as preamble for adversaries such as Russia to invade Ukraine, as the U.S. looked weak on the international stage, critics raged at the time.
The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan upon the U.S.’ withdrawal.
Identifies ‘Silk Road’ founder as ‘fentanyl dealer’
In Harris’ afterword of the book, she took issue with the individuals Trump granted clemency upon his return to the Oval Office, including those involved with the breach of the U.S. Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021, “numerous tax cheats,” and Ross Ulbricht, who Harris identified simply as a “fentanyl dealer.”
“The Justice Department is going after Trump’s enemies list, while Trump supporters have been pardoned and released: January 6 rioters who attacked police, the fentanyl dealer Ross Ulbricht, numerous tax cheats,” Harris wrote.
Ulbricht, however, was never charged or convicted of fentanyl-specific crimes.
Ulbricht was the founder of the now-defunct darknet drug market previously called Silk Road, which is viewed as the first modern version of the dark web. He was arrested in 2013 at the age of 29, and found guilty in 2015 of distributing narcotics (via conspiracy), distributing narcotics by means of the internet, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking and continuing criminal enterprise.
Fentanyl is a wildly powerful synthetic opioid that has gripped the nation and caused an increase in overdose deaths. Fentanyl overdose deaths did not dramatically rise until 2013, when Ulbricht was arrested, and followed previous national addiction trends to prescription opioids and heroin between the late 1990s and 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.
Ulbricht, who identifies as a political libertarian, was sentenced to life without parole, with his friends and family advocating for his release during the more than 11 years he spent behind bars. Trump answered the call to pardon him Jan. 21.
“I just called the mother of Ross William (Ulbricht) to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,” Trump wrote in a social media post after his inauguration. “The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”
Following Harris’ book release, the now-free Ulbricht took her claim of identifying him as a “fentanyl dealer” head-on in an X post slamming the characterization.
“Hey@KamalaHarris, You called me ‘the fentanyl dealer’ in your new book and attacked President Trump for freeing me after more than *ELEVEN* years in prison. Yet, I wasn’t prosecuted for dealing drugs myself and fentanyl wasn’t part of my charges. The truth has never mattered to you. The goal is just to make me and President Trump look bad at all cost, isn’t it? Don’t be a sore loser, Kamala,” he wrote.
‘Closest election’ in the 21st century
Harris launched her book tour in September, when she began joining media interviews and stops in cities across the country to celebrate her 107-day campaign, and also repeatedly has claimed it was the “closest election” this century.
“It was the closest election in the 21st century. It was one of the top three closest elections in the last century. So for all those pundits who want to say that America is not ready for a woman to be president, I reject that,” Harris said during her New York City book stop on Sept. 24.
She again claimed just days later from Howard University: “By the way, what is also historic about that, in many ways — it was the closest election for president of the United States in the 21st Century.”
“Period. Period,” she added.
Harris lost both the Electoral College and popular vote to Trump during the 2024 election in a defeat that also included each of the seven battleground states voting in favor of Trump. Harris ended the campaign with 75,019,617 total votes to Trump’s 77,304,184 votes, and 226 electoral votes to Trump’s 312.
The 2000 election between George W. Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore is considered the closest election of this century, was ultimately decided by 537 votes in Florida. Bush also notably lost the popular vote in that election, but secured the needed electoral votes to cinch victory, while Trump also lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College in the 2016 election against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Fox News Digital reached out to Harris’ post-administration office Tuesday inquiring if her team hired a fact-checker to review the book or Harris’ comment on the 2024 election being the “closest” this century but did not receive a response.
Harris’ book tour is set to run through at least Nov. 20, and includes stops Toronto and in London.
The post Kamala Harris office silent when questioned if fact-checker reviewed new book before publication appeared first on Fox News.
