by Brad Friedman
Who will sue the federal criminal next?...
UPDATE: Original false stories still posted, uncorrected, on Breitbart 'News' site...
By Brad Friedman on 3/8/2013, 5:35am PT
Former San Diego ACORN worker, Juan Carlos Vera will receive $100,000 in a settlement from federal criminal and professional liar
James O'Keefe, after being secretly video-taped in violation of
California law by the Rightwing propagandist. The tape was just one in a
series of similar videos, all deceptively edited as part of his 2009 ACORN "pimp" hoax series.
The story of the settlement was originally broken by Wonkette, which published the 3-page settlement document [PDF], yesterday.
Several different official investigations, including those by the former MA Attorney General [PDF], by the Kings County, NY District Attorney, and by the CA Attorney General
all determined that there were no violations of law performed by any
ACORN worker seen in the surreptitiously taped videos. The officials
found the tapes were "highly" and "deceptively" edited.
The videos were published originally by the late Republican con-man Andrew Breitbart who, before he died of heart failure just over one year ago, was likely to have been pulled in to the civil case as well, after O'Keefe disclosed in his deposition that Breitbart had advance knowledge of the scheme to secretly video tape workers in violation of CA's Invasion of Privacy Act.
After Breitbart's publication, the edited tapes were widely covered,
without fact-checking, in both the Rightwing media such as Fox "News"
and non-Rightwing media such as the New York Times. The Times was eventually forced to issue partial-corrections for their inaccurate reporting after a six month effort by The BRAD BLOG
to point out how they'd been duped by O'Keefe, who had lied about
appearing as a 70s era blaxploitation "pimp" in the offices of ACORN.
A 2010 investigation by the CA Attorney General
determined there was "no criminality" by ACORN workers seen in any of
the raw video tapes. O'Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles agreed to turn
over the unedited tapes in exchange for immunity from criminal
prosecution in the state. "The evidence illustrates that things are not
always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing
of reality," California's then AG Jerry Brown said in a statement
accompanying the release of his office's investigation which "involved
attorneys from all three legal divisions – Criminal Law, Public Rights,
and Civil Law – as well as Special Agents from the Department’s Bureau
of Investigation and Intelligence."
"Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor," he added.
While the deal left the AG's office unable to prosecute the duo, the
criminal investigation found that O'Keefe and Giles likely violated the
civil provisions of CA's Privacy Act and could be sued under those
provisions "for recording a confidential conversation without consent."
Vera, who, after his odd meeting with O'Keefe and Giles had the
wherewithal to contact the police, sued both of them in July of 2010 for violations of the act...
Giles had the common sense to settle with Vera last summer
after a string of losses in court. O'Keefe, on the other hand,
attempted to argue a First Amendment privilege as a "journalist" to
secretly video tape Vera. Judge M. James Lorenz soundly rejected the argument in May of 2011, but O'Keefe persisted in his unsuccessful defense.
O'Keefe now finally faces at least some accountability in the
settlement, which, in addition to agreeing to pay $100,000 to the former
ACORN employee, notes that he "regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or
his family."
Thousands of ACORN workers were left unemployed by the
O'Keefe/Giles/Breitbart stunt after the U.S. Congress also fell for it.
In 2009, shortly after the deceptively edited tapes were released, they
passed legislation, signed by President Obama, that federally defunded
the four-decade old community organization which had advocated to end
predatory lending practices and helped millions of low- and
middle-income Americans obtain housing loans and legally register to
vote. The group was forced to shut its door in the wake of the manufactured scandal.
While O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart helped perpetrate the long held GOP lie that ACORN was involved in voter fraud, there is not one piece of known evidence to demonstrate that even one illegal vote was ever cast thanks to an improper registration by any of the organization's tens of thousands of voter registration workers.
The only question now: Will any of those other ACORN workers who were improperly fired due to O'Keefe's illegal, secret video tapes file suit against him as well?
* * *
UPDATE 2:27pm PT: Conor Friedersdorf's coverage of the Vera/O'Keefe settlement over at The Atlantic
points out that, to this day, Breitbart's fake "news" site, where the
fake ACORN stories were originally published, still has the original
inaccurate story sliming Vera --- published as is, with no correction,
even though it was long ago debunked as nonsense, and even since O'Keefe
has agreed to apologize and pay him $100,000 in the settlement as
described above.
Writes Friedersdorf:
After making Vera look like an eager would-be sex
trafficker, what did Breitbart and O'Keefe do when it was reported that
he had in fact called the police? What did they do when the California
Attorney General investigated the case and affirmed as much? Did they
append a correction to the story and apologize? Did they do what they
could to give this man back his reputation?
They did not.
When last I wrote about this story in 2010, long after all the facts had come to light, there was no correction appended to the story. And look at the page today: The original story is still up with no correction, no clarification, no editor's note --- nothing.
When last I wrote about this story in 2010, long after all the facts had come to light, there was no correction appended to the story. And look at the page today: The original story is still up with no correction, no clarification, no editor's note --- nothing.
The other stories in the ACORN series, similarly found to be
nonsense, some of them almost immediately after publication, have also
yet to be corrected. This one,
for instance, made the case that an ACORN worker in San Bernardino had
killed her husband. Yet, within hours of its publication, San Bernardino
police had investigated and issued a statement including this important point:
"From the initial investigation conducted, the claims do not appear to
be factual. Investigators have been in contact with the involved party's
known former husbands, who are alive and well."
Nonetheless, that original, if phony, story remains at the site,
uncorrected even today, though the video itself is no longer embedded: MORE
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