We came across multiple posts on the social media platform X about the following topic:
The posts focus on the relationship history of Kamala Harris, the vice-president of the US and the likely nominee of the Democratic party following President Joe Biden’s decision to step down from running for re-election.
The claims allege that Harris used her past relationship with the former mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown to advance her political career ‘in exchange for their relationship’. In particular, the claim states that Brown ‘appointed her to two state commissions during the time they were together’. They also suggest impropriety on the part of Harris suggesting that Harris had been involved in a relationship with Brown when he was a married man.
The claims surrounding Harris and Brown are not the only ones alleging that Harris benefited from improper relationships. We uncovered another group of claims suggesting that Harris had been involved with a famous man at the same time as another woman, describing her as the man’s ‘side piece’—a term suggesting involvement with someone already in a monogamous relationship.
The man is described in some posts as Montel Williams, a former tv show host, and in other posts as the singer Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who is accused of sexual misconduct and other illegal activity including sex trafficking. While the advantage to Harris of this relationship is not detailed, the suggestion appears to be that she benefited from her partner’s fame.
Harris and Brown
When we conducted a search regarding Harris and Brown, the former San Francisco mayor, we found that this story had been circulating even prior to Harris taking up the post of vice-president.
Snopes in August 2020 reviewed claims that Harris had had an extramarital affair with Brown to boost her career and found them to have a mixture of truth and falsehood. Snopes found that there are ‘elements of objective fact’, but that ‘other elements are sensationalised and misleading’.
According to Snopes, Harris did date Brown for some time between 1994 to 1995, when Brown was still married. At the time, however, Brown had been estranged from his wife for at least 13 years, having separated since 1981.
The relationship was ‘conducted in the open’ and was well known in California political circles, with California-based news outlets reporting on the relationship in 2019 when Harris launched her presidential campaign for the 2020 election.
In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2019, Brown confirmed that he and Harris had dated over 20 years prior. Brown wrote that ‘he may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when (he) was Assembly speaker’, adding that he ‘certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco’.
Brown adds that caveat that he had ‘also helped’ with the careers of other prominent politicians in California, such as the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Gavin Newson.
Los Angeles Magazine, writing about the relationship in 2019, confirmed that Brown had appointed Harris to a six-month role on the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, and a role on the Medical Assistance Commission.
It adds that Brown ‘had a reputation for filling many openings with his personal associates and inner circle’, noting that he had replaced Harris with another associate when she vacated the role on the Appeals Board. LA Mag also noted that Harris ended the relationship before Brown became mayor of San Francisco.
Harris did not run for elected political office until well after her relationship with Brown ended, when in 2003 she successfully ran for the office of district attorney in San Francisco.
LA Mag noted that from as early as 2003, Harris’s rivals in elections had attacked her based on her past relationship despite her distancing herself from her past with Brown. The publication also suggested that Brown himself had sought to play up the connection between himself and Harris through actions such as encouraging fundraising, without input or consent from Harris’s campaigns.
The claims regarding Harris and Brown were corroborated by Reuters Fact Check.
Harris and Williams
When we investigated the claims regarding Harris and Williams/Combs, we found that this, too, was a claim that had made the rounds in the years prior.
Snopes confirmed that the images and videos in the posts depicted Harris with Montel Williams, a former television and talk show host, on the red carpet at the Eighth Annual Race to Erase Multiple Sclerosis at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, California in 2001. The claims regarding the man being Diddy are therefore false.
Snopes noted that the images had resurfaced on the internet since 2019, and that the other women featured in the pictures was Williams’ daughter Ashley. These details can be confirmed when viewing the file image on the Getty Images archive.
Montel Williams responded on Twitter in 2019 to insinuations regarding his past relationship with Harris, stating that he and Harris had ‘briefly dated about 20 years ago when we were both single’. He stated that he had ‘great respect’ for Harris and that her dating history had been a target for her political opponents and critics due to her gender.
The reporting by Snopes was corroborated by AP News.
Some Truth, but No Evidence of Impropriety
In sum, we find that while there is some truth to the claims of Harris benefiting from a past relationship, there is no evidence that supports the allegation that she directly sought and obtained political advancement in exchange for a relationship.
While Williams was better known than Harris at the time that they dated, there is no evidence that Harris had benefited from her relationship with him, and she was in a monogamous relationship with him.
It is true that Harris was in a relationship with Brown at a time when he was married, though he was long estranged. Harris appears to have distanced herself from her previous association with Brown through her time running for political offices since 2003.
While Harris’s career benefitted from her association with Brown through his appointments of her to the state commissions, there is no evidence that her relationship was transactional or that she lacked the capacity for the roles. Furthermore, this does not appear to be uncharacteristic for Brown, with several other associates also benefitting through their links to him.
While there are therefore elements of truth to the details regarding Harris and her relationship with Brown, we overall find the claims to be highly misleading by omitting key context regarding Brown’s marriage, his political behaviour, and Harris’s actions since she began to run for elected political office.
While Harris may have benefited from her associations to her former partners, there is no evidence that Harris entered into improper relationships with the aim of advancing her political career, as the claims suggest.