Posted on 09/26/2009 4:54:09 AM PDT by fabrizio
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, September 25, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The liberal community-based organization ACORN, which was recently disgraced by a series of undercover videos showing illegal activity by the group's employees, is now suing the young pro-life duo who shot the videos.
Defendant James O'Keefe, 25, who is being sued together with 20-year-old investigative partner Hannah Giles, is known among the pro-life community for conducting sting operations against Planned Parenthood in conjunction with Live Action Films. In one such investigation, O'Keefe caught a Planned Parenthood employee accepting a donation earmarked for the abortion of a black child.
Earlier this month the pair published videos of their visits to ACORN offices in five different jurisdictions, dressed as a pimp and his underage girlfriend-prostitute seeking a loan. Employees in the videos coached the flamboyantly-dressed pair in their endeavor to open a secret brothel complete with El Salvadorean child prostitutes, and to launder the ill-gotten funds for the pimp's future congressional campaign.
Both Republican and conservative Democratic legislators immediately condemned the contents of the videos and called for the de-funding, once and for all, of the controversial ACORN. The liberal activist group has been dogged in recent years by accusations of wide scale voter fraud, and, more recently, has been accused of covering up nearly $1 million in embezzled funds by ACORN founder Wade Rathke's brother.
"It is evident that ACORN is incapable of using federal funds in a manner that is consistent with the law," said House Minority Leader John Boehner in response to the videos. "Simply put, ACORN should not receive another penny of American taxpayers' money." Boehner's office estimates ACORN has received more than $53 million directly from the federal government since 1994, and likely more indirectly through federal block grants.
Although ACORN first responded to the scandal by firing several of its employees, the group has turned to the offensive by suing O'Keefe and Giles as well as Breitbart.com LLC for publishing the videos.
The lawsuit alleges that the pair violated Maryland's recording law, which requires consent from both parties, while videotaping employees at ACORN's Baltimore office. The suit also complains that the videos caused "extreme emotional distress" to the ACORN employees in the footage.
ACORN seeks $1,000,000 for itself, $500,000 for each individual plaintiff, as well as $1,000,000 in punitive damages against each defendant, and an injunction against further dissemination of the videos.
While O'Keefe and Giles left little room to suppose that both parties might have consented to the recordings, legal expert Ben Sheffner noted on his blog "Copyrights and Campaigns" that the suit is nonetheless likely to fail: Maryland precedent calls for the statute's enforcement only when plaintiffs have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" (REP).
"While the law in Maryland itself is scant, and the question is not entirely free of doubt, I think it unlikely that a Maryland court would find that ACORN and its employees had a REP in the circumstances here," wrote Sheffner.
Despite the group's attempts to save face in the wake of the footage, ACORN's once-tight relationship with the federal government continues to slip.
The Internal Revenue Service has become the latest agency to cut ties with ACORN, announcing it would expel the group from its volunteer tax assistance program. In addition, amendments stripping ACORN of its federal funding have passed in separate measures in both House and Senate. Almost immediately after the videos were published, the Census Bureau broke off its cooperation with the group.
ACORN was not the only group to respond aggressively to the videos: columnist Joel Mowbray notes that each of the "Big Three" news publications - the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press - were forced to issue retractions after publishing misleading and defamatory information about O'Keefe.
"One wonders if the MSM reporters with egg on their faces realize the irony: the 25-year-old, self-described 'skinny nerd' with scarce resources has outclassed deep pocketed media titans," wrote Mowbray. "Public trust in the mainstream is at an all-time low. Its reaction to the ACORN revelations and ham-handed attacks on O'Keefe will only accelerate the downward spiral."
See O'Keefe and Giles' ACORN Exposé Videos and Transcripts here.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Pro-Life "Live Action" Investigator behind ACORN Sex-Racketeering Exposé http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09091613.html
Planned Parenthood - Racist Donations Welcome We Abort Black Babies Undercover investigator calls for congressional examination of PP http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/apr/08040303.html
Was the filming of the Rodney King “beatdown” a violation of the rights of the police dept?
Here’s a recap of the actual law: http://www.rightgrrl.com/tripp/woods.html
As I read it, if you are a party to the communication, consent is implied by both parties, but not by a third party, so you can tape yourself having a conversation, but a third party cannot.
According to liberals any filming that hurts the groups they hate (police, military, conservative etc) is fine.
Any filming that hurts them (criminals, ACORN, liberals "on the take") etc" are "bad".
Is Acorn affiliated woth the Austin Powers franchise at all?
good luck on collecting that from two broke people
IF they lose, and that’s a long shot, we should not pay their fines - that would only reward ACORN and their lawyers. The kids go bankrupt, we save our money to get them started after. SCREW ACORN. Meanwhile discovery will be a stone b_tch for ACORN. Specifically we need to uncover their ties to other organizations so that we can follow the money. Mixing funds which have restricted uses with partisan political activity is one thing which can put ACORN operatives in jail. Remember that.
I don’t see this lawsuit getting any legs. You notice its civil not criminal. As I recall the DA’s office refused to prosecute. IF this were to get some legs due to a judge, others would enter the fray very quickly. This has too many impacts - from security in public places to the ability of media to gather information.
I agree.
Has anyone set up a defense fund for these kids?
I suspect this is just a publicity stunt. This gives the broken glass democrat supporters the opportunity to dismiss their misdeeds as illegally recorded therefore easily ignored.
My prediction is they drop the case just before the discovery phase. This organization is as crooked as they come. They do not want to open their books and show the outflow of money and who it goes to.
But, this may bite them in the butt though. Suits usually bring counter suits. If the investigative duo are smart they launch their counter suit and nail these jerks with discovery. I’ll bet there are a whole bunch of democrat politicians on the phone right now telling them they better drop this fast and go under the radar for a while.
Obama himself is putting pressure on his advisors and Demorats to kill the law suit. The buck stops in Obama's lap and nobody wants to see the ugly stains in his underwear, we need to save those when the Dems loose majorities in both houses.
Obama was counting on ACORN's corruption to bring him victories, it ain't looking good for the clown now.
I hope this goes to court. As others have stated, discovery will be golden. On the part of ACORN, this suit shows the weakness of their leaderships’ thought process. I’d wager that more than a few of their lawyers told them not to sue, but being impetuous, vain, and good ole fashioned stupid, they brushed all that aside in favor of the “we’ll show them” attitude, which is exactly what I would expect from such a cabal. ACORN is no different than a union, except this union only produces one product...fraud. Having been to union meetings myself, I have seen the twilight-zone psuedo-reality that people of this mindset live in. They look around, see so many other like-minded people, then get it in their heads that they are special and above the law. The ones that move up to leadership positions in organizations like unions or ACORN get a special irrational sense of entitlement because they are in a position of power that they otherwise would never achieve elsewhere. For instance, could Bertha Lewis ever expect to run a legitimate company with employees in the numbers that ACORN employs? Absolutely not. She is not smart enough to begin with, and her serious character flaws would make it impossible for her to make the objective decisions needed to successfully run an enterprise. Moving forward with this lawsuit is proof positive of that. They are on the low ground, but have decided to charge anyway. This would make Sun Tzu chuckle, and Maj. Gen. George Pickett proud, so I hope they attack with all the audacity of hope that they can muster.
Hannah shouldn’t even waste any omney on a lawyer. She has everything on her sidse, plus she has no assets.
This is a walk in the park she can do herself.
This opens up ACORN to Discovery. Don’t think that’s what they want..
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