How Trump is distorting what happened to Jaleel Stallings to attack Kamala Harris

On Tuesday, the Trump campaign accused Vice President Kamala Harris of encouraging people in 2020 to bail out of jail a St. Paul man who tried to kill Minneapolis cops five days after George Floyd’s police murder.

Trump’s “war room” posted on X that Harris raised money to bail Jaleel Stallings out of jail after he was “charged with the attempted murder of two police officers” alongside a photo of Harris laughing and Stallings’ mug shot.

“Kamala Harris is radically liberal and dangerously incompetent,” the post said.

It’s true that Stallings was charged with attempted murder, but the Trump campaign fails to mention that Stallings was acquitted by a jury of all charges and one officer involved in the incident later pleaded guilty to felony assault on Stallings, and apologized to him.

On the night of May 30, 2020, Stallings was standing in a parking lot on Lake Street with a few others when suddenly shots rang out from a white cargo van that had been slowly creeping down the street before coming into view from behind a building. Two rounds were fired at the group.

Stallings was hit in the chest with what he thought was a bullet. He immediately drew his pistol and fired back at who he thought might be white supremacists that the governor had warned were fanning the flames of protest. He later testified that he purposely missed, aiming low, toward the front of the van, hoping to scare off whoever had shot at him.

Suddenly members of a SWAT team piled out of the unmarked van yelling, “Shots fired!” Stallings realized they were police, dropped his gun and lay face down on the pavement, arms spread-eagle, videos show.

He’d been shot with one of the plastic projectiles the SWAT team had been firing at people out past a curfew as police struggled to get control of the city amid protests, arson and riots. Even though they were firing “less lethal” projectiles, under MPD policy, officers weren’t supposed to target a person’s head, neck, throat or chest “unless deadly force is justified,” because they could cause permanent damage or death.

Thinking someone had just tried to shoot them, the officers beat Stallings bloody for 30 seconds, and beat and Tasered his acquaintance for two minutes. Stallings was hospitalized with a fractured eye socket. Stallings is clearly beaten and bloody in his jail mug shot, but he had a weird smile on his face. He later said he was just happy to be alive.

Then-Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman released a statement painting Stallings as a would-be cop killer.

Two years later, Freeman would say the cops lied about what happened, and called the case “justice run amok.” But immediately after the incident, the case made national headlines based on charging documents that said Stallings fired at a uniformed SWAT team.

The case made headlines again when the Minnesota Freedom Fund paid $75,000 cash to get Stallings out of jail. He had no prior criminal record.

After Biden campaign officials donated to the Freedom Fund, then-President Donald Trump’s War Room used the case to raise money, tweeting that “Jaleel Stallings is a would-be cop killer who was in jail for firing at police during ‘peaceful protests.’ Now he’s free thanks in part to Biden campaign officials who donated to pay bail fees.”

And then everybody moved on, until Stallings went to trial a year later.

Stallings’ attorney Eric Rice obtained the officers’ body camera videos, which told a different story than what police and prosecutors had told the public.

Months after the trial, the Reformer was the first to report that Stallings had been exonerated. He’d claimed self-defense, and after a five-day trial, was acquitted by a jury of eight charges, including two counts of attempting to murder police officers.

The city later settled a civil lawsuit with Stallings for $1.5 million, and another lawsuit filed by his acquaintance, who’d been beaten and tasered, for $645,000.

And yet Stallings continues to be tarred and used for political gain.

U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota posted on X Monday that Harris once supported “a bail fund for Minnesota criminals who should have stayed behind bars.”

The Trump campaign followed suit Tuesday with its post highlighting Harris’ June 1, 2020 post encouraging people to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund. Spurred on by celebrities like Seth Rogen, Steve Carrell and Harris, the tiny bail fund was overwhelmed with over $30 million in donations, which it used to bail out over 2,000 people as part of its goal of ending the cash bail system in which only people without money have to sit in jail awaiting trial, often at the expense of jobs, housing and family support.

The bail fund was established in 2016 by a University of Minnesota grad student, Simon Cecil, and due to its meager resources initially focused on bails of up to $1,000.

The bail fund has been excoriated for bailing out a twice-convicted rapist and a man who was charged with second-degree murder three weeks after his release, but stands by its decision to bail out Stallings over four years ago.

“We’re really proud of having paid for (Stallings),” spokesperson Noble Frank said last year.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on Facebook and X.