Posted by: ST on September 23, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Via The Politico:
ACORN filed suit today in Maryland against conservative filmmakers James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles and conservative Web site Breitbart.com for secretly taping the organization’s employees at its Baltimore office.
In the complaint, ACORN alleges that the filmmakers entered into the organization’s offices in July with a “hidden camera and microphone” and taped employees Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams. Both employees are listed as plaintiffs on the complaint, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.
ACORN is seeking $500,000 for each employee and $1 million for the organization in damages.
The shakedown campaign has officially begun.
What’s the real issue here for ACORN? Being caught – via an undercover sting – encouraging a “pimp” and a “prostitute” to lie to the IRS. And that’s not all:
Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.
The videotape was made public Thursday on BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.
In the videotape, made on July 24, James O’Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named “Kenya” who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN’s office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.
ACORN is clearly in the wrong here, as they are in the cases that have been exposed in other cities around the country. But of course they are taking the typical liberal approach when caught in the act of blatant wrongdoing: They’re blaming someone else.
What’s Congress – which has poured billions of dollars into ACORN over the last several years, and had been prepared to do this year – doing about this? Why, the same thing ACORN is – they want to investigate … the investigators:
Two powerful Democratic committee chairmen on Tuesday came to the defense of the embattled community group ACORN, sending a clear signal that not all Democrats are content to let Republicans destroy the organization.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) have formally requested the Congressional Research Service provide a “clear and objective analysis” of the “charges and countercharges” that have recently been levied against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
[...]
The pair also want the report to provide an analysis of “recent ‘sting’ activity concerning ACORN,” a reference to the recent videos taken by a man and a woman posing as a prostitute and a pimp that seemingly caught ACORN employees giving advice on how to evade federal tax and housing laws.
“Conflicting allegations have been made about the propriety of these activities,” Conyers and Frank wrote. “Please research and report on the federal and state laws that could apply to such videotaping and distribution of conversations without the consent of all parties.”
No word yet from the WH on whether or not President Obama believes ACORN, Frank, and/or Conyers have “acted stupidly.”
Stay tuned …
Edited to add: Interesting how Frank, Conyers and other Democrats supposedly want to see “all the facts” before they make a judgement call on ACORN’s actions, but they’d be the first to call for hearings and condemn our military off of nothing more than an unsourced report of “prisoner abuse” reported on the front page of the NYT …
Let discovery begin. Start searching ACORNS records.
Hey, ST, found this one earlier. The IRS has severed ties with ACORN. Never got around to blogging it.
I missed that, too, William – thanks.
Interesting that ACORN omitted Fox News from its suit, which has deep pockets and lawyers on retainer. This is the same tactic the NEA and other unions use. They sue those least able to defend themselves financially, hoping to bankrupt (destroy) the defendants. Unless Breitbart, O’Keefe and Giles get some pro-bono assistance or deep pocket backers, they could be at a real disadvantage.
However, let’s remember that when Compean and Ramos, the border guards who were railroaded, couldn’t support their families, donations by the hundreds poured in to help. With the right publicity from bloggers and talk radio, I’ll bet defense funds would pour in for Breitbart, O’Keefe and Giles, too.
Why, how dare those chumps expose what ACORN is really all about! The nerve of some peoples’ kids.
I’m no lawyer, and I don’t know what the exact complaints in the suits are, but if the complaints deal with libel and I remember what little law I used to know, it ain’t libel if it can be proven true, and the clips are pretty clear about those things.
And finally, the reason Frank (especially), Conyers and other jackasses (including the WH) can’t have someone secretly videotaping untoward behavior should be pretty obvious: they don’t want anything they do in this “most transparent administration ever” caught by some sneeky little two-bit hood like Breitbart for all the world to see.
Yes, let the legal system work….discovery should be very thorough. A brilliant move by these two young people to do something that lawmakers refused to do. If ACORN thought a law suit would scare them, they are wrong. I think that their legal action was already a foregone conclusion. This is the usual course taken by a liberal organization…..they will always file suit. Now let’s see if this goes to trial or dies in litigation. My money is on the later.
ACORN may have the backing of the 111th Congress as Frank et. al. want a federal investigation to see if local laws were violated by O’Keefe and Giles. This strategy serves notice upon other people with inside information to consider the risks of coming forward.
When Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white person, she broke local laws. Rev. Dr. M. L. King encouraged civil disobedience to break local laws. The arrest of Rodney King was recorded by a citizen without the permission of the police. I don’t recall any federal investigations into the actions of those courageous individuals.
But I do seem to remember when the FBI conducted a sting (ABSCAM) exposing congressional corruption, the FBI was admonished. Perhaps O’Keefe and Giles have touched upon the same nerve that the FBI did and this congress will not have ordinary citizens questioning their integrity.
ACORN’s legal action is just a smoke screen to provide cover for congress’s intimidation of potential whistle blowers. People with information know the real threat from ACORN is the union thugs co-mingled with ACORN who have enriched themselves by exploiting the poor the organization claims to help.
ACORN will let congress (and their cronies in the MSM) identify those involved in exposing corruption and local community organizers will be happy to take it from there.
Of course, Dingy is talking about the health care of the “fired” ACORN employees, and the economic recovery of ACORN. Thugs Central/Ho HQ just can’t do without guvmint welfare for survival.
Which just points out that, if it were worth doing some private group would have done it long ago, if it could make a profit. Why is the guvmint forcing us to do something we don’t want or need, and paying America-haters to do it?
And, of course, the last part Dingy left off was that such an investigation might prove embarrassing to the party of unsurpassed transparency.
Ain’t socialism great?