Democratic candidates are clamoring for the coveted position as the presidential nominee for the United States's 2020 election, but as they campaign from coast-to-coast, the public is putting in work at exposing the skeletons in their closets. Kamala Harris's record has been questioned with regards to incarcerating 1,500 people for marijuana possession and other instances during her time as District Attorney of San Francisco, but somehow it's her inclusion in a Lil Kim documentary that has given people pause.
In the summer of 2005, just a week before her birthday, Lil Kim was sentenced to a year in federal prison after a jury found her guilty of perjury. During a grand jury trial, Kim testified that she had not seen her manager and another man on the day that there was a shooting outside of Hot 97 radio station back in 2001. She later admitted that she lied and the "no snitching" culture was attributed to Kim's loyalty to her friends.
Leading up to the beginning of Kim serving out her sentence, BET aired their Lil’ Kim: Countdown to Lockdown special that walked viewers through the details of Kim's career and trial. The producers interviewed a number of people for the series, including Kamala Harris who offered up her two cents regarding the code of the streets.
“It is much more serious than what is the code among friends around the street,” Harris said. “What I would like to see is, in the way that we’re handling cases like those of Lil’ Kim, we say as a community that we’re not going to glorify the gangster.”
After Harris's clip recently resurfaced, there immediately was misinformation regarding her involvement. Rumors began to circulate that Harris was somehow directly involved with Kim's case—an assertion that is easily disputed. However, social media is often filled with people who are more concerned with headlines than they are with the content, and before anyone knew it, Kim fans were attacking Harris for being responsible for putting Kim in jail. Kim hasn't spoken out about the controversy, but it's safe to say that her prison sentence is a chapter of her life that she'd rather not relive.