News outlet The Chicago Tribune has blasted Vice President Kamala Harris for paying Oprah Winfrey and other high-profile celebrities huge sums of campaign cash for their public endorsements of her failed presidential run.
As Slay News reported, Harris’s billion-dollar campaign ended with $20 million of debt.
After her campaign ended, it emerged that the Harris campaign had been paying celebrities for their endorsements.
Most of the celebrities who endorsed Harris – and attacked President Donald Trump – were either paid to do so, or they were linked to accused sex trafficker and pedophile Sean “Diddy” Combs, or both.
Among those Diddy-linked VIPs was Oprah Winfrey, who received a cool $1 million to campaign for Harris.
The issue has raised serious concerns about ethics violations.
In an editorial following reports that the Harris campaign paid Winfrey and other celebrities massive sums for campaign events, the Chicago Tribune wrote:
“Having someone with a large following simply stand next to a candidate at a podium and say a few words, solo, is one thing; doing a whole live-streamed event with, say, Oprah Winfrey, is another.”
FEC filings show the Harris campaign made two $500,000 payments to Winfrey’s production company on October 15.
The payments were received a month after Winfrey appeared with Harris at a town hall event and weeks before she was on stage with the Democrat candidate at a Philadelphia rally before Election Day.
The payments to Winfrey were first reported by the Washington Examiner.
The Chicago Tribune editorial board wrote:
“Winfrey this week found herself having to deny that the campaign had paid her a ‘personal fee’ of $1 million following some media scrutiny of the public accounting of campaign expenses, saying instead that the money went to her Harpo Productions, once famously headquartered in Chicago’s West Loop and now based in West Hollywood.”
“It’s true that production workers need to be paid and that’s fair enough; they’re not donors,” the board added.
“And, frankly, $1 million is not all that much to Winfrey and so we very much doubt that she was seeking any kind of personal payday from her chosen candidate.
“But she does own Harpo and serves as its chairwoman and CEO.
“The production fees should have been a campaign donation.”
“Better yet, rather than do such events, the Harris campaign would have been better advised to let its candidate answer questions from independent journalists and give her more of a chance to explain herself and lay out her plans for America’s future,” the editorial board wrote.
“Celebrity osmosis did not work; voters wanted to hear more about what Harris would do for them.”
When confronted by TMZ over the payments, Winfrey pushed back on the criticism.
Winfrey denied the payments reported to the FEC, claiming she was “paid nothing.”
A spokesperson acknowledged to Variety that Harpo Productions took money from the campaign.
However, the company claims it was for “production costs.”
The spokesperson said:
“Oprah Winfrey was at no point during the campaign paid a personal fee, nor did she receive a fee from Harpo.”
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