Robert F. Kennedy Jr. VP pick Nicole Shanahan helped route millions to pro-migrant, anti-cop groups
Nicole Shanahan, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, has a long history of donating to soft-on-crime causes, including leading a foundation that spent big on groups opposed to mandatory minimum prison sentences and supporting the removal of police from schools.
The 38-year-old, who has spoken about her involvement with criminal justice reformers in San Francisco, is the founder and president of the Bia-Echo Foundation, which has contributed more than $11.6 million to left-wing causes, according to a review of receipts by The Post.
The bulk of that money, $10 million, went to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which passed the cash to organizations advocating for lighter prison terms and supporting lawyers representing illegal migrants in the US.
The foundation also sent $625,000 to Impact Justice, which advocates giving homeowners stipends in exchange for housing newly released prisoners in private homes and whose founder, Alex Busansky, has called the US prison system “a direct legacy of slavery.”
Impact Justice’s board includes Shimica Gaskins, president and CEO of End Child Poverty in California, who has crowed about fighting for “economic relief for our undocumented brothers and sisters” and leading “groundbreaking pursuits for educational justice by removing police from schools in LA and Oakland.”
Shanahan was also one of the top donors backing woke Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, giving him more than $150,000 during his 2020 campaign, according to the LA Times.
Gascon ran on a platform of reducing incarceration, eliminating sentence enhancements, ending the death penalty and banning minors from being tried as adults.
Shanahan was also a “major donor” in support of Measure J, a proposition mandating LA County spend 10% of its locally generated funds on social services like housing, mental health treatment and other jail diversion programs.
That money cannot go toward prisons, jails or law enforcement agencies.
“I’m happy that I could be a major donor for Measure J in Los Angeles County, which was voted in and will be rerouting some of the law enforcement budget toward mental and social support services,” Shanahan said in a 2021 interview with San Francisco magazine.
She also argued that having a “mental health professional on the scene of George Floyd’s arrest would have de-escalated the situation and possibly saved his life.”
Measure J was challenged in court by local law enforcement unions, which warned that the funding cuts imposed on the criminal justice system would make Angelinos less safe.
“With unprecedented staffing shortages, the upcoming Olympics [in 2028], and increasing crime, there couldn’t be worse time to cut deputies,” Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs president Richard Pippin said in August last year, after a California appeals judge upheld Measure J.
Shanahan’s funding history aligns with the opinions of Kennedy, who has advocated for eliminating prison sentences for non-violent drug crimes and diverting addicts to rehabilitation centers or farms.
“Prisons are now the biggest industry in rural areas in our country, and I want to develop, instead, a string of farm drug rehabs, healing farms, in those same rural communities where people can go if they get involved in drugs, if they’re debilitated by depression or dependence on psychiatric drugs,” the 70-year-old said in a campaign video.
Mental health is “going to be a priority to me and not putting people in jail for drugs. We put people in jail for crimes, for violent crimes,” he told Fox Carolina News in an interview this past summer.
The Kennedy-Shanahan campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Post.
