The latest Trump attack ad claims one of the 2007 Chauncey Bailey killers “should have been in jail” when Bailey was killed. But the reality is that the office of then-SF DA Kamala Harris did put that suspect in jail for a year.  

Those of you who were reading during the early days of SFist might recall our coverage the gang-style murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, a scheme executed by the leader and some employees/cult members of the now-defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery. One of those accomplices was DeVaughndre Broussard, who’s still in prison. The 2007 murder happened in Oakland, so you would have to really squint to find a connection to then-SF District Attorney Kamala Harris.

But a couple of new Trump ads are doing that squinting and blaming Harris for Bailey’s murder, as the Bay Area News Group reports. The ads claim that Broussard “should have been in jail” for a 2005 assault in SF, conveniently ignoring that Harris’s office did in fact put Broussard in jail for a year.

The first version of the ad is seen above. It blares the completely fake SFGate headline from 2007 declaring “Kamala Let Violent Criminals Go Free,” as well as numerous other histrionic statements that appear nowhere in the article. (That actual August 7, 2007 article has the headline “New details on man who confessed to killing editor / Oakland police don't think he acted alone; he was on probation for robbery-assault,” and also notes that Broussard was “being held without bail at Santa Rita Jail.”)

That ad is paid for by the Super PAC Make America Great Again, Inc.

The second version of the ad is a direct Trump campaign ad, tells the same story with some archival footage and reenactments, and says of Broussard, “San Francisco's liberal DA Kamala Harris put him back on the street, instead of in jail.” It also contains the quote “Blame Kamala Harris,” attributing that quote to “Father of the victim.”

That quote does appear in the aforementioned Chronicle/SFGate piece. (At the time, SFGate was the Chronicle’s only web outlet.) But that “Father of the victim” was not Chauncey Bailey’s father, it was the father of the victim from Broussard’s previous 2005 assault.

And moreover, Broussard did serve a year in jail for that assault, though Harris’s office cut a plea deal for a year in jail and a year’s probation, given that Broussard was 18 and had no criminal record prior to the previous assault. And it’s unlikely Harris played any role in this low-level office decision.

“More than 95% of [criminal cases] are in plea bargain,” Thomas Peele, author of the book about the case Killing the Messenger, told KQED. “That’s what happened. He got out. This is not a case that ever reached the level of the district attorney herself.”

You are unlikely to see this ad on TV in California, as we are not a swing state. But the Make America Great Again, Inc. super PAC has bought $67 million of ad time for these and other ads that are being broadcast in swing states, according to the Bay Area News Group.

Related: New Trump PAC Ad Unloads on Kamala Harris Over 2008 Incident When She Was SF DA

Image: @realDonaldTrump via Twitter