During a July 27 campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, 2024 Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump claimed Vice President Kamala Harris supports “ending cash bail nationwide.”

Verdict: Unsubstantiated

Harris called for ending cash bail during her 2020 presidential campaign. One expert disagreed on the accuracy of Trump’s claim about Harris supporting cash bail while two others said she did agree with ending it. Two experts disagreed with Trump’s claim about cash bail putting criminals back on the streets.

Fact Check:

Polls conducted in battleground states, including Wisconsin and Minnesota, show a close race between Trump and Harris with Trump leading by 1 point in Wisconsin and Harris leading by 6 points in Minnesota, according to Fox News.

During his July 27 campaign rally, Trump claimed Harris supports “ending cash bail nationwide.”

“Kamala supports ending cash bail nationwide. No bail. If you kill somebody, that’s okay, you can come back whenever you’re ready, we’ll give you a little trial, put you in jail for about two days. Which means releasing violent criminals immediately after arrest right onto the streets,” Trump said.

These claims are unsubstantiated. On July 25, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Harris wants to end cash bail, referencing a memo from her 2020 presidential campaign that no longer appears on her campaign website.

According to the memo titled, “Kamala’s Plan to Transform the Criminal Justice System and Re-Envision Public Safety in America,” Harris supports ending cash bail. Page 13 of the memo indicates Harris’ plan includes ending “money bail” in order to “stop criminalizing poverty.” Under point number three which states “the system must treat individuals equitably and humanely,” Harris shares her reasoning for ending cash bail.

“Our bail system is unjust and broken. 450,000 Americans sit in jail today awaiting trial because they cannot afford to pay bail. Excessive cash bail disproportionately harms people from low-income communities and communities of color,” the memo reads. “Black defendants are more likely to be detained before trial and less likely to be able to post bail compared with similarly-situated white defendants. And black men pay higher bail than similarly-situated white defendants,” it continues. The memo cites data on bail reform and risk assessment from the Harvard Law Review, and on racial bias from Princeton University. The data from Princeton University appears to no longer be available online.

In addition, the memo mentions Harris’ Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act of 2017 (S. 1593), co-sponsored with Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, which “provides grants to incentivize states to significantly reform their money bail systems to make them more just.” According to Congress’ website, the bill was introduced, read twice, and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but not passed. According to BillTrack50, the bill is dead as of December 31, 2018.

Likewise, in September 2019, Vox noted that Harris’s criminal justice reform plan included ending cash bail. In discussing what it labeled as her “truly mixed” record on criminal justice issues, the outlet also mentioned her 2017 bill with Paul, calling it her “proposal for nationwide bail reform” and citing an article about the bill from NBC News. (RELATED: Was Kamala Harris Ranked The Most Liberal Senator By GovTrack?)

Furthermore, Politico, the Los Angeles Times, and the Courthouse News Service all reported Harris proposed ending cash bail as part of her criminal justice reform plan prior to suspending her 2020 presidential campaign. Michon Martin, a former prosecutor who, according to the Los Angeles Times, worked with Harris in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, called the plan a “comprehensive, holistic approach.”

“Instead of just trying to deal with one problem — whether it’s officer-involved shootings or the cash-bail system — this is a comprehensive, holistic approach. Kamala talks about reimagining what criminal justice is — still focusing on safety, but making sure the administration of justice is fair for anyone who’s involved in the system,” Martin said. Martin advised Harris as she “crafted the plan,” the outlet indicated.

Experts shared differing perspectives on Trump’s claims with Check Your Fact.

Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the memo does not necessarily call for an end to cash bail. He also said Trump “mischaracterized” eliminating what cash bail does.

“First, it is not at all clear that Kamala Harris did in fact propose eliminating money bail. The memo that is touted by some conservative media outlets as calling for an end to money bail does have a bullet-point heading with that language, but the accompanying policy statement instead refers to a program to incentivize states to make their money-bail systems more just—without explaining precisely what that would entail,” Neily explained via email.

“Second, contrary to Donald Trump’s mischaracterization in the video, eliminating money bail does not entail releasing all arrestees pending trial. People who are deemed to present a flight risk or an exceptional danger to the community can be—and regularly are—denied bail, meaning that they will remain incarcerated through trial,” he added.

Insha Rahman, vice president of advocacy and partnership and director of Vera Action at the liberal Vera Institute of Justice, agreed that Trump’s claim about eliminating cash bail sets criminals free is false.

“When VP Harris was a U.S. senator, she partnered with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act to encourage jurisdictions to reduce or end the practice of money bail. The premise behind this policy is that instead of punishing people for not being able to afford their freedom because they are poor and can’t afford bail, regardless of how minor the charges, or rewarding rich people for being able to pay their way out of jail, even on very serious charges, ending money bail requires judges, after an arrest, to release someone who poses no danger to public safety, and to detain someone pending trial when they are found to be an imminent risk to the safety of another person or the community. Former President Trump’s claim that ending money bail will lead to the release of anyone, even if they are accused of committing murder, is patently false and misrepresents the intent of this reform,” she said.

Rahman did state that Harris “supports ending money bail” and noted it was supported by a “wide range of elected leaders and politicians, including Republicans.”

“Vice President Harris supports ending money bail so that public safety, not wealth, determines who is released or remains in jail pending trial. This commonsense reform has been championed across the country by a wide range of elected leaders and politicians, including Republicans,” Rahman indicated.

Charles Stimson, a crime and justice expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation,  said Trump’s claim about Harris supporting the end of cash bail was “correct.”

“Trump is correct. Harris was on the ground floor of the ‘progressive prosecutor’ movement. When she was the California Attorney General, and Senator-elect, Harris was the co-chair of the transition team for Cook County State’s Attorney-elect Kim Foxx in 2016. The transition team produced a Transition Report, which, on page 7, calls for the elimination of cash bail for non-violent offenders,” Stimson said.

“Kim Foxx was the first George Soros’ progressive prosecutor.’ He gave $700,000 in total to two separate PACs to help fund her campaign in 2016, as outlined in Chapter Two of our book, ROGUE PROSECUTORS. The rogue prosecutor movement, since Foxx was elected, has pushed for the elimination of cash bail for most, if not all crimes. They call cash bail a ‘poverty penalty.’ Harris has supported the rogue prosecutor movement since its inception, including radical DA’s like Chesa Boudin (San Francisco), George Gascon (San Francisco and later Los Angeles), Larry Krasner (Philly), and continues to mentor Kim Foxx,” he added, citing a 2019 tweet from Foxx praising Harris for her “guidance.”

“Her fingerprints are all over the progressive prosecutor movement, as she helped write the playbook for this failed social experiment,” he said.

Trump’s claim that ending cash bail sets criminals free . The liberal think tank Center for American Progress argued in a September 2022 article “in jurisdictions where commonsense cash bail reforms have been implemented, those who await their trial in the community are no more likely to be re-arrested after bail reform was passed than before.”

Former Republican Illinois State Rep. Jim Durkin argued in a September 2022 opinion piece that the elimination of cash bail could represent a “horrible slap in the face to victims and neighborhoods desperately seeking safety.”

“With the elimination of cash bail, criminal suspects will be detained before trial only in the case of forcible felonies that are nonprobational or unless they are considered a flight risk or a danger to someone in the community. Many violent crimes, including robbery, vehicular invasion, driving under the influence causing death and second-degree murder, do not qualify under this law,” Durkin wrote.

Similarly, New York lawmakers grappled with the effects of a law “curtailing the use of cash bail” and suspects went on to commit new crimes after being freed from jail, NBC News reported in January 2020.

Check Your Fact has also contacted spokespersons for Trump and Harris for comment.