Trump Ad Blames Harris for Freeing Oakland Journalist’s Killer. It’s Not True, Reporters Say

A new Donald Trump campaign ad that blames then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris for the 2007 killing of an Oakland journalist is “low and lacks context,” according to reporters who covered the murder and called the ad factually inaccurate.

Chauncey Bailey was the editor of the Oakland Post, a Black newspaper in the East Bay, when he was shot and killed on his walk to work, targeted by a company he planned to release a report on. Trump’s latest ad suggests that the man who shot him — who was previously incarcerated for an unrelated assault — was only out of jail because Harris had released him.

The ad opens with footage that appears to be of Bailey’s body lying covered on 14th Street in downtown Oakland. A narrator says that his face isn’t viewable because it was “blown away” by a “repeat criminal” — Devaughndre Broussard — thanks to Harris’ “liberal” leadership.

The statement isn’t true, according to Thomas Peele, who released the book Killing the Messenger investigating Bailey’s murder in 2014.

Broussard had been convicted of a previous assault on a Muni bus in 2005 after he was charged with robbery, battery and assault with a deadly weapon by a prosecutor in Harris’ office. He took a plea deal, which Peele says was typical for such crimes, and was sentenced by a judge to one year in prison followed by probation.

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

After he was released, Broussard, then 19, needed work. One of his friends connected him to Yusuf Bey, who owned a chain of bakeries called Your Black Muslim Bakery.

“A friend of his … had been Mr. Bey’s cellmate — also in jail in San Francisco for a couple of months — and told Broussard he knew of this bakery in Oakland that hired Black people who were in dire financial straits, who needed work,” Peele says. “And Mr. Broussard went there and was hired.”

Bey called the business a model of economic self-reliance in Oakland’s Black community, according to previous KQED reporting. It was also a front for his polygamist cult that had years of allegations of rape, assault and fraud, according to Oaklandside reporting.

As Bailey began to investigate Your Black Muslim Bakery’s criminal activity, one of Bey’s sons, Yusuf Bey IV, found out and ordered Broussard and another employee to kill him to prevent the story from going public. Bey IV had taken over the business after his father died in 2003.

Broussard originally admitted to killing Bailey on his own, but he recanted and eventually aided the defense in convicting Bey IV and the other man present at the murder. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and is serving a 25-year sentence.

The killing and missteps by Oakland police led a group of Bay Area journalists to form the Chauncey Bailey Project to investigate the story. Peele was a member.

Peele noted that the killing doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with Harris, who has released her own campaign ads touting her history as a prosecutor.

In a post on social media platform X after the ad was released, Peele called it “factually wrong” for Trump to suggest that prosecutorial leniency by Harris led to Bailey’s murder. “Dre Broussard beat a man, pled guilty [and was] sentenced to a year in jail,” he says. “If Dre had still been in jail on [Aug. 2, 2007], 2 other [Your Black Muslim Bakery] hitters would’ve carried out the killing.”

KQED’s Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman contributed to this report.