the office of the Attorney General. If they’re able to set something up, they will reach out to you directly.” Aware that Craven may have crossed the statutory firewall that compels the separation of the operations of the campaign and the attorney general’s office, I wrote back, “This is a campaign issue, not an attorney general issue. Please provide the contact information for the director of communications for the campaign, so I may speak with him/her directly.” Prior to the publication of this story, neither Barankin nor Harris’ press office responded to repeated emails and telephone calls requesting comment for the story and clarification of the facts presented in it, including Barankin’s status with the campaign. In a written response to my request for the Department of Justice’s authorization for Barankin to work on the Harris campaign, Becerra stated, “Mr. Barankin did not work on [Harris’] senatorial campaign.” After I presented Becerra with evidence that Barankin did work on the campaign, he responded, “The DOJ has no records of what he may or may not have been doing on his own time.” According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), on December 14, 2016, Harris’ Senate campaign reimbursed Barankin $2,194 for “primary” campaign travel expenses. The reimbursed items are not clearly delineated, but they appear to include $1,532 for the Holiday Inn Capitol in Washington, D.C. and a series of Uber rides. In March 2017, the Harris campaign reimbursed Barankin $54 for an undisclosed travel expense
Barankin did not respond to queries about whether he used his annual-leave benefits to work as the communications director of Harris’ senatorial campaign during 2016. According to an expert consulted for this story, if Barankin did not use annual leave to work with the campaign, he may have fallen afoul of laws prohibiting state employees from working on campaigns during normal working hours, which, if it occurred with any pattern of regularity, could evoke criminal and civil penalties – at the discretion of the Department of Justice. After Harris was elected
Did Barankin perform volunteer work for the campaign and travel on its dime while he was being paid by the Department of Justice to do his job?
attorney general in 2011, she chose Barankin to manage the department’s 5,000 employees. He had previously worked as a communications director for former state attorney general Bill Lockyer.
In late February 2016, I telephoned the press office at the Harris campaign headquarters in Los Angeles. I wanted the candidate to review the findings of an investigative story about a purported breast cancer epidemic in California. I spoke with the campaign’s digital director, Mariah Craven, who told me that all press questions were being handled by Barankin at the attorney general’s office. Barankin did not return messages that I left on his phone at the department, but I persevered. On March 8, 2016, Craven, who had worked as Attorney General Harris’ press secretary in 2015, e-mailed me using a campaign e-mail address, “I sent your request [for an interview with Harris] to the communications staff in
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