So what, someone made O'Keefe and his co-conspirators wear telephone repairman/technician's clothes and forced them to make entry into Landrieu's office? Not likely.
If you read the affidavit, it's quite clear that they were up to some monkey-business. Does that monkey-business rise to the level of a federal crime? Well, if they were indeed manipulating the phone system, or attempting to gain access to a secured area where phone equipment is located, they're going to need some competent counsel.
Agreed. As self satisfying as it was to see Acorn exposed by O’Keefe last summer, one must admit his tactics then bordered on being illegal, and he might have actually had charges filed against him in Maryland.
All the rest of it is BS. Since they weren't armed I doubt there's any real crime here that can be made to stick.
BTW, if they've installed an improved PBX and done all the correct security procedures for it, there's no way it can be tapped anyway. You'd need to access it over the wire ~ hitting the blocks won't do anything for you.
One of the reasons for certain provisions in The Patriot Act was so the FBI could tap cellphones AND modern PBX mediated systems using modern systems. You can't wait until the call is initiated to start your tap with the good stuff out there today. You have to be hooked up long before a call is made!
There's the relevant question. Does an attempt amount to a violation of the law. Depends on the statute, I guess. An individual who goes into a bank and asks where the vault is may intend to break into it, or he may just be curious. Here you have the possibility that the intent was to show how bad the security surrounding the phone system was, not to actually tap it. There's some wiggle-room here. I'd say the final disposition is unlikely to be a conviction of the initial charge, though there may be some lesser offense that fits the actual fact set.
And all of this just after Breitbart (at the Rick Perry bloggers’ summit this past weekend) calls for the New Internet Media to destroy the wretches in the MSM.
What was O’Keefe thinking?
I agree.
College pranks are funny. Videotaping Loquetha the ACORN worker whipping out a W-9 form for an Ecuadorian underage prostitute ring was priceless.
Breaking into Federal property under false pretenses to access confidential information from a US Senator...not so funny....
The only defense that could save their hide is there has to be some really sinister plot in the national interest that they were trying to expose...like Landrieu is a stealth al Quaeda agent who was planning to blow up the set of Sesame Street or American Idol. Unlikely.
Anything short of that...and they are toast.
No, it’s only clear that agent Rayes has made allegations.
If he’s a liberal (which is very likely given his profession) he’s either duped by his leftist superiors or he’s outright lying in an attempt to advance the leftist agenda.
In this case, the attempt takes the form of retaliation for the acorn exposure. And sending a message that the left refuses be held accountable.
If a leftist, Rayes would be aware on some level that the left can only advance its agenda through fraud and deceit. He would be less likely to know the cause of this state of affairs: the fact that leftism is born of envy and based on relativism, which is equivalent to nihilism, which is nothing and therefore without value.
Does that monkey-business rise to the level of a federal crime? Well, if they were indeed manipulating the phone system, or attempting to gain access to a secured area where phone equipment is located, they’re going to need some competent counsel.
if they were just doing what the fbi should have been doing to begin with... for the sake of the people... this could be the start of political prisoners in america.
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