ACORN Scandals Grow & Grow

Campus Report ^ | October 23, 2009 | Malcolm A. Kline

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ACORN Scandals Grow & Grow

Malcolm A. Kline, October 23, 2009

When two college students pretending to be a prostitute and her pimp sought help from ACORN employees, staffers couldn’t do enough for them as the two claimed to be importing underage girls to work as ladies of the evening. The Association for Community Organizers for Reform Now responded with a lawsuit.

Documentarian Andrew Breitbart, who helped distribute the videos, disputes the claims made by ACORN. “ACORN claims this is a $100 million Fox News investigation,” Breitbart said at a press conference at the National Press Club here in Washington, D. C. on the morning of October 21, 2009. “Actually, it was a $1,300 investigation.”

“Then why didn’t they sue Fox News rather than James and Hannah?” Breitbart asked. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles—the former in his mid-20s, the latter barely in her third decade—who on the basis of their investment undertook the ACORN investigation, were also at the Press Club event but would not take questions due to pending litigation.

Their visit to the Philadelphia ACORN office, as it is the center of legal action, had to accordingly be amended. The edits caused a perceptive Huffington Post contributor at the event to note that the Philly footage Breitbart showed was “heavily edited.”

Actually, the other ACORN videos have circulated widely on the internet and led to a vote to cut off federal funds in a Congress dominated by a political party that has arguably been the chief beneficiary of the non-profit’s activities...