Do you remember the great Acorn scandal? It turns out that there actually was some criminal activity going on.
A former ACORN employee in San Diego who lost his job after being filmed giving advice to "ACORN pimp" James O’Keefe is suing the amateur videographer and his partner, Hannah Giles, San Diego CityBeat’s Dave Maass reported Friday.
Juan Carlos Vera was one of a number of ACORN employees who in the summer of 2009 was secretly filmed giving advice to O’Keefe and Giles, who told media they were posing as a pimp and prostitute with plans to bring underage prostitutes to the US from Latin America.
In a lawsuit (PDF) filed in a California court this week, Vera argues O’Keefe and Giles broke the law when they taped their conversation inside the ACORN office. California is one of about a dozen states where conversations can only be recorded if all parties to it agree. Vera is seeking $75,000, plus unspecified "special damages."
California Attorney General Jerry Brown cleared Vera of wrongdoing in a report earlier this year. Brown found that, though Vera appeared sympathetic to the "pimp and prostitute" during the taped meeting, he immediately notified the police of the conversation. Brown’s investigation also found that the O’Keefe videos were "significantly edited."
The shocking prospect of ACORN employees aiding in human trafficking prompted Congress to de-fund the group last year, a move that was later ruled unconstitutional. And a report from the Government Accountability Office, released earlier this year, found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of ACORN, which received some $40 million in federal funding from 2005 to 2009.
In February, Hannah Giles admitted that the flamboyant pimp and prostitutes costumes in which she and O’Keefe were seen in some of the videos were never worn inside ACORN offices, contrary to most news reports. "In truth, O’Keefe represented himself to low-level ACORN workers as the college law school boyfriend of Giles, desperately trying to save her from the house of an abusive pimp who she believed would kill her," Brad Blog reported.
Vera’s lawsuit is not the first one to be launched by an ACORN employee over the O’Keefe videos. In January, Pennsylvania ACORN worker Katherine Conway-Russell sued the duo, claiming that they had misrepresented her in the videos.
"Unlike the videos [O’Keefe] has been showing on the Internet, we refused to help him and called the police and filed this report," Conway-Russell said in an ACORN-produced video.
The growing body of evidence suggesting ACORN’s wrongdoing is overblown comes too late for the organization, which announced in March it would be disbanding, due to image and financial problems… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Raw Story>
Rachel Maddow provides some excellent background here.
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Let’s no forget that O’Keefe is a long term GOP activist with strong ties to the party leadership. This was not an act of a lone wing nut. It was an orchestrated Republican scam that successfully targeted ACORN to reduce voting by minorities, the poor and the disenfranchised. The Republican Party is devoid of honor.
12 Responses to “A Lawsuit to Love”
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I wish I was not falling in love with Rachel Maddow and her reportage. It makes it so hard to be objective when she gets on something like this, her enthusiasm for her job is infectious and that my friend scares my objective desires. I hope these two get their just deserts. The bastard beat the LA conviction by not going to jail maybe this time.
I know what you mean Mark. If she was straight, or even bi, and I was 25 years younger…
You are correct, Tom, this IS a lawsuit to love. I sincerely hope the ‘special damages’ are in the millions due to the character assassination that occurred to that man.
Is there any reason that Faux Noise can be sued for running with, giving credence to, and widely proliferating falsified information? Maybe sue them into non-existence? Hey! A man can dream!
Otis, I hope so too.
To include Faux Noise we would need to prove that they knew the information was false and published it with malicious intent. It’s a high barrier.
I think ACORN should file a class action suit against these two (including the other people that they scammed) and anyone that funded this mis-adventure. Fox News should also be sued for not airing the full tape and deliberately skewing the reporting of this incident, including Mr. Vera reporting this information to the police immediately after they left the office. I hope the sue the fuck out of everyone involved here. Gerry Brown is a tough AG and he’ll do the right thing with this info. Even the GAO says they are not at fault – there’s lots of damning evidence in this case and it should be a slam dunk for AG Brown.
Lisa, ARORN can’t. They no longer exist. Individual employees can, however. Faux will just lie and say they never had the unedited tape.
I did pump a fist when I saw this on Rachel’s show, then I sobered up (not from alcohol, but elation) fast to realize what a smashing success this scam was. It killed Acorn dead because nobody did anything to fact check it. That the ass managed to hide the raw footage so well until Jerry Brown got hold of it, is sad. What’s wrong with the news orgs? Why wasn’t there a lot more digging for the truth considering how outrageous the charges against Acorn were?
What’s wrong is that it’s about the ratings, not the accuracy. Scandal sells soap.
What I found intriguing in the Complaint is “… Does 1-20 inclusive”
I realize that’s SOP for lawyers to be able to include additional defendants (John/Jane Doe) later, I’m just hoping that Breitbart will be one of the “Does” included as discovery moves along – especially since he lives in LA.
An excellent suggestion, Nameless.
One hopes this opens the whole Pandora’s box. Stooges like these two seldom take the hit if they can flip on the higher-ups that concocted the scam. I find it hard to believe they woke up one morning and set out to pull this off by themselves. (Obviously, they’re not very bright people.) So where did this idea hatch? How high up in the aviary does it go? Who convinced them they could pull this off. I hope we find out.
And I’m fairly certain Vera has a case against FOX here. Don’t they have some legal responsibility for checking their facts before defaming a private individual? Perhaps an FCC investigation of their standards and practices is in order…
SF, I’d be happy to see these two get off if the help convict Republicans higher up the food chain.
Faux will claim that were not provided unedited tapes. Th get them, malice has to be proven.