This isn’t really a diary because I am not a writer, but last month long-time member Davey1107 posted a great comment here about Kamala Harris and her time as California Attorney General.

I think Kamala Harris and Steven Mnuchin and the whole OneWest situation is complicated and cannot be reduced to soundbites, which means the decisions that were made need to be considered with careful thought instead of just causally saying things like “she let him get away with hurting people” as some social media users are saying today.

So I’m posting this diary to share the comment Davey1107 wrote a little more widely. I will delete this if Davey1107 doesn't like this use or if I’ve broken any rules by sharing this in this way. Please let me know. I’ve bolded some of the most important parts, IMHO.

Here is what Davey1107 wrote:

First and foremost, let’s point out that of all the attorney generals and elected representatives in the country during the financial crisis, there was ONE who chose to investigate and who went after the banks for a settlement. That was Kamala Harris. She didn’t get any prosecutions or convictions, but she did strong-arm the banks into turning a $2 billion settlement proposal into $25 billion of immediate payments. This can’t be overlooked. Sen. Harris was entirely responsible for pulling out of negotiations in 2011 in order to force the banks to pay more. And it worked. So before you get all high and mighty about how you would have for sure jailed some bankers, weigh what good it did California families to get $25 billion compared to what they would have gotten from watching a complex civil proceeding play out over five years. She got money to people losing their homes, and that was more important. On the OneWest issue, it’s a misnomer (ie, lie) that Harris “didn’t prosecute Mnuchin.” He was never under investigation, and Harris didn’t receive a referral to criminally prosecute anyone. What she got was a recommendation to file a civil enforcement action against OneWest. In such a filing, no one person is accused of anything. Instead, an entire company is looked at, and perhaps fined for wrongdoing. So why didn’t she file the action? Well, Senator Harris isn’t exactly free to openly discuss that, because we don’t openly discuss investigations. It’s not appropriate to discuss partial evidence, suspicions, or rumors. This harms the party under investigation, who has a right to a presumption of innocence. But the reasons this didn’t go anywhere are likely far simpler. The civil enforcement action requested by the consumer law division would have potentially fined OneWest in order to encourage them to fix their internal issues. Those fines would have been entirely passed on to shareholders. Sen. Harris likely saw no reason to invest time and energy in pursuing fines to be levied on people already losing their shirts, just so that OneWest would be encouraged to shape up, when the recession was ensuring banks were going to be forced to do that anyway. Senator Harris won real results with real benefits for her constituents in a time when few public servants scored these sort of victories. She passed on a minor civil action and focused on winning Californians $25 billion in compensation.

EDITED TO ADD:

I also want to bump this comment from below by Dfh1 because it’s another excellent point: