When the NY Times confronted JD Vance over an old email where Vance said “I hate the police,” Vance claimed he was venting his frustration with SFPD over a car break-in. But the Chronicle found that the break-in happened several months after Vance sent the email.

Trump’s vice presidential running mate and one-time SF venture capitalist JD Vance is dealing with a scandal today wherein Wired has uncovered how one of his top policy advisors has been posting on Reddit about cocaine and opiate use. So that’s inconvenient. But the Chronicle has fresh new information on a Vance mini-scandal from this weekend wherein Vance says in an old email from 2014, sent to a transgender friend and former law school classmate, "I hate the police."

He addressed the remark in a Sunday interview with the New York Times, and said he was simply upset with the San Francisco Police Department for failing to solve a car break-in that affected he and his wife Usha. But the Chronicle just did some digging through SFPD records, and found the car break-in happened at least eight months after Vance sent the email.  

(JD Vance voice: “The rules were you guys weren't going to fact check.”)

First, we are reprinting Vance's quote to the Times in its entirety, describing the break-in and the SFPD response over which Vance was supposedly upset:

First of all, have you ever said something in a private conversation that out of context wouldn’t necessarily translate to a public conversation? I think 100 percent of people would say yes. I don’t exactly remember when I sent that email, but I strongly suspect that what happened is, Usha and I lived in San Francisco for a couple of years, and when we first moved — I get frustrated even thinking about it right now — there was a break-in, in the car that I had. And it was stupid. I shouldn’t have left her suitcase in the car to begin with, but I did. And it had a ton of, like, completely priceless things. I’m not talking about priceless, as in we paid a lot of money, but the necklace her grandmother gave her that she bought in India that she gave her on the morning of our wedding — things like that were stolen. And I went to the police in San Francisco, and — have you ever seen the movie “The Big Lebowski”?

So I love “The Big Lebowski,” and the Dude has his car stolen. He says, Hey, are you like investigating it? And the cop kind of chuckles and says, Yeah, we got a couple detectives down at the crime lab. That was kind of the response that I got to, are you guys gonna try to recover this stuff? I was frustrated at the police, I fired off a frustrated email to a friend and, again, this is why I think it’s a violation of trust. Do I think it was representative of my views of the police writ large in 2016 or 2014 or whenever I sent that email? No, of course not. You send something to a friend: Hey, I’m pissed off about this. I think it’s very ridiculous for the media to say, well, JD used to be a “defund the police” guy because in a private email, I expressed some frustration about a distinctive police officer. Come on.

But the Chronicle researched the incident, and found that the break-in occurred on August 15, 2015. That’s at least eight months after Vance sent the “I hate the police” email.

Vance spokesperson Luke Schroeder responded to the Chronicle that Vance “wasn’t positive if the robbery he and Usha were victims of in San Francisco motivated a decade-old email exchange.”

“Senator Vance does not believe an isolated negative interaction with a police officer reflects on the police as a whole,” Schroeder continued, “and thanks police officers in San Francisco and across the nation for putting their lives on the line to protect the American people.”

Admittedly, this story is not getting a ton of play outside San Francisco, and is unlikely to register as a big scandal. Considering that Vance once called Trump “America’s Hitler,” it's not like his old statements are going to cut into Vance’s Republican support.  

What might cut into Vance’s Republican support, though, is reminding Trump voters that Vance once had a transgender friend.

Related: JD Vance In Palo Alto Monday Night for Big-Bucks Trump Fundraiser [SFist]

Image: NEW YORK - OCTOBER 01: Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) participates in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1, 2024 in New York City. This is expected to be the only vice presidential debate of the 2024 general election. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)