Jami Floyd is a journalist, former public defender, contemporary of Kimberly Guilfoyle, and is presently writing a biography of Thurgood Marshall.
For 25 years, Kimberly Guilfoyle has floated the story that Kamala Harris tried to block her from getting a position at the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. This, she says, happened when she was living in LA, began dating San Francisco Supervisor Gavin Newsom, and reached out to the DA about a job.
She claims Harris called her, pretended to have a role in hiring, and dissuaded her from applying. Kimberly applied anyway.
The story made headlines in San Francisco when it dropped in 2003. Kamala was running for DA. Kimberly was, by then, engaged to Newsom, who was running for mayor. And, the press loves a catfight.
I do not. But I know both women and it’s time to put this story to bed.
Kamala got to the San Francisco District Attorney’s office in 1998. Terence Hallinan, a former pugilist with a nose to show for it, ran an unconventional shop, especially for the ‘Law & Order’ 1990s. He supported decriminalizing prostitution and reform of marijuana laws.
I also interviewed with Hallinan. I got to know him well as a public defender and later as a crime reporter. I know first-hand what distinguished Hallinan as a prosecutor and person—his independent streak. No one, least of all an underling ADA, was going to tell him who to hire–or not. Notably, Kimberly got the job.
Gavin Newsom (l), Kamala Harris (c), and Kimberly Guilfoyle volunteer at a San Francisco church in 2004.
Jeff Chiu/AP Photo
Yet, the story has been revived, more than two decades later, in the New York Times. We cannot know what the women said on the phone, and Hallinan is conveniently dead. But even the Times reported that Hallinan only “broadly” corroborated Kimberly’s version of events insofar as he said Harris voiced “fierce opposition” to hiring Guilfoyle.
Hallinan did not corroborate the substance of the phone call—although it is true that, after Harris beat Hallinan in the same 2004 election that brought Gavin Newsom to City Hall, she cleaned house and swept Kimberly out.
But Kimberly, already on to bigger things, didn’t need the job.
In 2001, she married her Prince Charming. She took Newsom’s name, keeping her own surname alongside his in the bargain. Still, she seemed all-in. “Do I think [Gavin] could be president?” she mused for a 2004 spread in Harper’s Bazaar. “Absolutely. I’d gladly vote for him.” They were called the New Kennedys, a liberal power couple. It was Camelot, all over again.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton (l) speaks at a campaign rally for San Francisco mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom as Newsom’s wife Kimberly Guilfoyle-Newsom looks on December 8, 2003 in San Francisco, California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
But then Kimberly made her first fateful move. She left Camelot for Court TV.
On the cusp of becoming the first lady of San Francisco, Kimberly came to the attention of TV executives after the grisly death of Diane Whipple and what would soon be dubbed the “San Francisco Dog Mauling Trial.”
Second chair to a very sober Jim Hammer, a prosecutor who’d once studied to be Jesuit priest, Kimberly saw her prospects grow exponentially. Overnight. With the short, emotionally fraught trial, she was set on a shortcut to fame and fortune, even speedier than San Francisco’s Camelot could provide. The lingerie model-turned TV host in her cat-eyeglasses was perfect for a rebranded Court TV with its new tagline: “Seriously Entertaining.” She inked the deal.
Henry Schleiff, Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom and Catherine Crier of Court TV, musician Richie Sambora and Lisa Bloom and Jami Floyd of Court TV attend People For the American Way “Spirit of Liberty” Gala at Plaza Hotel on March 8, 2005 in New York City.
Thos Robinson/Getty Images
I was delighted to find Kimberly at Court TV when we both landed there in 2004. We both had husbands in California and would hit the red carpet together–her stunning figure always in Chanel. In town cars, we talked about long distance romance, San Francisco politics, and our youthful dreams.
Kimberly was one of the few people in the cut-throat broadcast news business who was not. Even after she left for Fox News, Kimberly was warm and engaging whenever we met. One jam-packed night at the Plaza in 2007 stands out. She’d heard from our mutual friend Dan Abrams that I was there and went out of her way to hunt me down in the mob scene. She give me a big hug. We stood in that big, beautiful lobby in our painfully high heels, reconnecting for a long while.
She’d divorced Gavin (something I’d counseled against in our town car days), and moved on to her second husband, Eric Villency. That was her next fateful move. But I still admired her scrap and ambition and her wily use of her formidable smile and family connections to get ahead.
Kamala Harris campaigns for District Attorney in San Francisco, 2003.
Getty Images
Kimberly had come up right behind Kamala and me in San Francisco—all female criminal lawyers, all outliers for our multi-hyphenate identities (Kimberly is Puerto Rican and Irish). San Francisco has a big footprint on the national landscape, but it’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone. Multiracial women practicing criminal law makes for a small Venn diagram.
Kimberly tried to keep feet in two worlds, one in her Camelot, the other in the bigger Big Apple. But, in her increasing absence, the limelight was shining on someone else. Kamala. So, Kimberly tried to lure some back.
“You have to understand, I came with an excellent résumé,” Guilfoyle complained about the “job snub” to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003.
If so, why dredge it up years after the fact? She got the job. She landed a huge case. That case catapulted her to national notoriety.
But that was just it. In her self-imposed exile, as she pursued her own limelight, Kimberly saw that Camelot’s retinue and camarilla carried on. Without her. So, she stirred the pot.
“Kimberly being Kimberly,” a former Court TV colleague said.
Kimberly Guilfoyle speaks at a the RNC victory rally in 2021 and a GLAAD event in 2004
Getty Images
Upon arrival, she milked the dog-mauling case for all it was worth, as if she’d been the lead attorney, although anyone who’d watched the trial had seen the more senior Jim Hammer run the case. Once at Court TV, she worked hard enough, but producers felt they had to support her. Some sayshe had to be “spoon-fed.”
Baked into Court TV folklore is this revealing moment. Kimberly at the anchor desk, her Both Sides co-host Vinnie Politan at her side. The show is live. Kimberly reads her scripted lines from the teleprompter. Then, for no explicable reason, she begins to recite the camera directions. Again, LIVE on the air. Along the lines of, “Turn to Camera One” and “Alt PF1.” This goes on for a good 15 seconds. The control room is flabbergasted. We all make mistakes, but this one lives in the annals of Court TV.
A public defender who went up against Kimberly at the San Francisco Hall of Justice says he’s unsurprised by this story. But he says he would have been “as surprised” to see her lead the dog mauling trial or any other major case.
Prosecutors Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, District Attorney Terrence Hallinan, and James Hammer, listen as family members of Diane Whipple address Superior Court Judge James Warren during a sentencing hearing for Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel in San Francisco, June 17, 2002.
Reuters
“Dumb as a stump,” he said. And he’s quick to add that he’s always had this opinion of her. “This isn’t political. It was just the truth.”
At a plea negotiation, Wallace P. Douglass, a popular but “suffer-no-fools” judge once became exasperated with Kimberly’s overreach in asking for a harsh sentence “off the charts,” way beyond what was contemplated by the sentencing guidelines.
“He just rolled his eyes. He rolled everything,” and denied the request, the lawyer said.
Let’s just say, Kimberly did not flourish for her gifts in court.
And this became my issue with Kimberly. Her understanding of the law. Or lack of it.
Kimberly Guilfoyle with Donald Trump Jr. in 2019 and with then-husband Gavin Newsom in 2003.
Getty Images/Reuters
I’ve put aside allegations of sexual harassment made against her at Fox News. She’s innocent until proven guilty. But would she extend the constitutional courtesy to the criminal defendants we covered? Nope.
At weekly editorial meetings with our boss, Marlene Dann, Court TV’s executive vice president, and her number two, Tim Sullivan, we met with our fellow anchors tangling over the cases. In every one, from the superficial to the serious–everything from Michael Jackson to Saddam Hussein to Enron–she invariably could not grasp this fundamental principle of American law: the presumption of innocence.
Consistently a moderate by anyone’s standards, Kimberly turned a hard right when a new opportunity came knocking in the form of Donald Trump. Her latest, if not last, fateful move was to gamble on the wrong Camelot, the Trumpian version.
“I have known her for 25 years,” she barked at a recent GOP event about Kamala. “And let me tell you something: Do whatever it takes to keep her out of the White House!” But the former darling of Trump supporters was met with a resounding silence.
Kimberly Guilfoyle speaks on Day 3 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 17, 2024.
Mike Segar
We’ve been to this movie before. As Kimberly sees her sun starting to set, her gamble not paying off, the fateful choices of her past yielding negative returns, as she again craves the spotlight, that old “job snub” resurfaces, in a desperate bid to remain relevant.
So what if Kamala voiced her “fierce opposition” all those years ago? If the story is true–if Kamala did discourage Terence Hallinan from hiring Kimberly–maybe Kamala was just prescient. Maybe Kamala could see back then what it took me 20 years to learn. Kimberly doesn’t believe in anything but Kimberly.
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