Less than a week ago, the San Francisco Superior Court dismissed the overwhelming majority of charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. Both individuals were responsible for exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of aborted baby parts. However, California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who received thousands in donations from the eugenicist-founded abortion mill, announced that he would revise criminal charges against them.
Initially, the trial court dismissed 14 out of the 15 charges that the Attorney General’s office levied at Daleiden and Merritt, keeping the charges for conspiracy to invade privacy. However, the Attorney General’s office stated that it could address the objections placed by the judge and re-file the charges within a ten-day grace period.
This is not the first time that both Daleiden and Merritt faced legal challenges to their expose against Planned Parenthood. Last year, a Texas court dismissed all charges against them and their organization, Center for Medical Progress, following a heavily-politicized effort to punish the individuals. Even the Los Angeles Times wrote an editorial about the lawsuit in California, describing Becerra’s actions as such:
It’s disturbingly aggressive for Becerra to apply this criminal statute to people who were trying to influence a contested issue of public policy, regardless of how sound or popular that policy may be.
Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, who is also an attorney, described how bogus the charges were in the following editorial:
California is a two-party consent state when it comes to taping private conversations. But those conversations have to be private. Fourteen of the 15 charges filed came under California Penal Code Section 632(a), which states in relevant part, “Every person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, eavesdrops upon or records the confidential communication … shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison, or by both that fine and imprisonment.” Note the language: confidential. These were not confidential communications.
Becerra’s attempt to continue punishing Daleiden and Merritt for having the audacity to expose Planned Parenthood’s savage practices demonstrates another instance of California’s Office of the Attorney General proactively performing a witch hunt against those who refuse to stand rank and file with the state’s progressive agenda. Former California Attorney General and now Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) also worked with Planned Parenthood to target Daleiden and Merritt, ordering raids on Daleiden’s apartment and confiscating his belongings.