California on Monday agreed to finally end the prosecution of Center for Medical Progress journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who released videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of aborted baby parts and organs, which is illegal.
The controversial prosecution of Daleiden and Merritt was sparked by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/us-news/kamala-harris-accused-of-weaponizing-calif-ags-office-against-activist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accused</a> of weaponizing her office to bolster a &#8220;mega-sponsor&#8221; in Planned Parenthood. The journalists were formally charged under Harris&#8217; successor with 15 felony counts for videotaping “confidential” communications.
&#8220;The agreement—a negotiated settlement with zero punishment—is in exchange for a new &#8216;no contest&#8217; plea by Daleiden and Merritt on a single video recording charge. It involves no jail time, no fines, no admission of wrongdoing, and no probation,&#8221; a <a href="https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/2025/01/breaking-state-of-california-agrees-to-end-unprecedented-prosecution-of-cmps-undercover-video-reporting/">press release</a> from CMP says. &#8220;The new &#8216;no contest&#8217; plea—which cannot be used adversely—will be entered into judgment as a misdemeanor in 6 to 12 months, and then converted to a &#8216;not guilty&#8217; plea, dismissed, and expunged.&#8221;
A <a href="https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-secures-felony-conviction-david-daleiden-and-sandra">press release</a> from California Attorney General Rob Bonta seemed to celebrate the plea deal.  The AG&#8217;s office said that Daleiden and Merritt were convicted &#8220;for criminally recording confidential communications with women’s healthcare providers.&#8221;
&#8220;Previously, in 2017, the California Department of Justice <a title="https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-xavier-becerra-announces-charges-filed-against-david-robert" href="https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-xavier-becerra-announces-charges-filed-against-david-robert">announced</a> the filing of an arrest warrant against Daleiden and Merritt,&#8221; the press release said. &#8220;[T]hey each pleaded no contest to, and were found guilty of, one felony count of California Penal Code Section 632(a) (unlawful recording of confidential communication).&#8221;
“While the Trump Administration is issuing pardons to individuals convicted of harming reproductive health clinics and providers, my office is securing criminal convictions to ensure that Californians can exercise their constitutional rights to reproductive healthcare,” Bonta said. “We will not hesitate to continue taking action against those who threaten access to abortion care — whether by recording confidential conversations or other means.”
Daleiden, who&#8217;s the president of CMP, called the end of the prosecution a &#8220;huge victory.&#8221;
“After enduring nine years of weaponized political prosecution, putting an end to the lawfare launched by Kamala Harris is a huge victory for my investigative reporting and for the public’s right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby body parts,&#8221; Daleiden said.
&#8220;Now we all must get to work to protect families and infants from the criminal abortion-industrial complex,” he added. “Taking the San Francisco case off the board allows me to focus fully on CMP’s mission to report on the injustices of taxpayer-funded experiments on aborted babies and continue to expand our groundbreaking investigative reporting.”
CMP noted that the undercover videos involved in the case sparked a massive <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-fetal-tissue-20171209-story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$7.8 million settlement</a> from two bioscience companies that admitted to illegally selling aborted fetuses from Planned Parenthood in Southern California. Their footage was also the subject of a &#8220;settlement with <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2017/01/24/arizona-ends-investigation-into-abortion-doctor-fetal-tissue-collections/96998988/">disgorgement</a> of profits from the sale of aborted fetal organs in Arizona, and the <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxton-fifth-circuit-upholds-decision-defund-planned-parenthood">disqualification</a> of Planned Parenthood from state and federal funding in Texas for violations of medical standards and ethics documented on the undercover footage—where Planned Parenthood <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/planned-parenthood-must-face-trial-over-texas-medicaid-fraud-claims-2023-10-24/">now</a> faces a nearly $2 billion federal False Claims Act case from the disqualification.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hurricane-kamala-activist-remembers-harrowing-raid-ordered-by-harris-over-planned-parenthood-videos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘Hurricane Kamala’: Activist Remembers ‘Harrowing’ Raid Ordered By Harris Over Planned Parenthood Videos</a>

Journalist David Daleiden

California Finally Ends Prosecution Of Journo Who Exposed Planned Parenthood With Damning Videos

California Finally Drops Prosecution Of Journalist Who Exposed Planned Parenthood With Damning Video

Abortion

California

Center for Medical Progress

Courts

David Daleiden

Kamala Harris

Planned Parenthood

Politics

Pro-Life Movement

It was a spring day in 2016 when 11 heavily-armed men pulled up to pro-life activist <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/david-daleiden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">David Daleiden&#8217;s</a> southern California home.
Daleiden’s crime? Exposing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of body parts and organs of aborted babies.
The person going after him? California Attorney General <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/kamala-harris" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kamala Harris</a>. 
At the behest of Planned Parenthood, on April 5, 2016, Harris ordered a raid on Daleiden’s apartment to seize undercover footage shot by his organization, the Center For Medical Progress. Harris&#8217;s office charged Daleiden with violating video privacy laws.
During the raid, Daleiden told The Daily Wire that a “dystopian kind of clown car” from the California Department of Justice showed up to his apartment in Orange County. To raid his apartment—which he says was only large enough to fit five people at a time—the 11-man team came armed with rifles and a canine unit in a white, windowless van.
“There were five big guys traipsing around inside the apartment looking behind statues of the Virgin Mary and rooting through my investigative files,” Daleiden said in an interview this week. “It was the most bizarre thing, watching them flip through, and thumb through printed out pages that I had of different companies&#8217; invoices for aborted baby parts from Planned Parenthood. They set the invoices aside and they didn’t seize those.”
They did take about half of the undercover footage Daleiden and his team had obtained of Planned Parenthood officials. A federal judge in San Francisco then placed an injunction on Daleiden from publishing the footage. Some of that footage has begun to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kamala-harris-made-a-damning-planned-parenthood-video-disappear-now-its-public?topStoryPosition=3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trickle out</a> in recent months, thanks to the work of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose office obtained the videos through congressional subpoena. 
Daleiden said the raid lasted about four hours and was a “harrowing experience.” 
“Imagine the state police showing up at your doorstep and just ransacking your belongings,” he said. “They overturned everything and made a huge mess.”
He said the agents were like “hurricane Kamala tearing through your living space.”
Daleiden said that the investigators who took his footage and began investigating him didn’t even watch the footage they were taking. 
“Under Kamala Harris’s leadership, they did this full on, SWAT team-style raid to seize the undercover tapes because they had all this damning stuff about Planned Parenthood on them,” he said. “But then once they got the tapes, they didn’t actually watch them, they just tried to validate a list that Planned Parenthood had given them of people that they could identify and use to bring these completely unprecedented charges against me under the California Video Recording Law.”
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722702091475000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1V1R-mNr1Y5atoHoQ3KD4O">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a>
Daleiden and fellow investigator Sandra Merritt were <a href="https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/cmp/support-our-legal-defense/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">later charged</a> with 15 felony charges of videotaping “confidential” communications by Harris&#8217;s successor—and future HHS Secretary—Xavier Becerra. Litigation is still ongoing in that case, though about half of the charges have been dismissed. 
“It’s a total weaponization of government,” Daleiden said. “As California attorney general, Kamala Harris weaponized the power of her office to cover up barbaric criminal activity on the part of Planned Parenthood. And she did so by invoking a never-before-used California video recording law that has never been applied to undercover news gathering.”
Daleiden said that Harris should be asked if she ever watched the videos his team had taken, or knew what was on the videos before ordering them to be seized. 
“So Kamala Harris weaponized her office and weaponized the law in a completely unprecedented way to try to discriminate against free speech that her powerful political backers disagreed with and that they wanted to suppress because the evidence was so damning for them,” Daleiden said.
Harris ordered the raid just two weeks after she met with Planned Parenthood officials, and after the organization had specifically requested the computers used for the undercover videos to be seized. Now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Harris has long maintained close ties with Planned Parenthood. She has made promoting abortion a central point of her campaign.

MixCollage-02-Aug-2024-10-51-AM-1780

‘Hurricane Kamala’: Activist Remembers ‘Harrowing’ Raid Ordered By Harris Over Planned Parenthood Videos

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/planned-parenthood" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Planned Parenthood</a> staff and managers appeared to discuss the sale of aborted babies’ body parts and other gruesome abortion practices in videos viewed publicly for the first time this week by lawmakers during a hearing in Washington, D.C.
At the Tuesday hearing, called “Investigating the Black Market of Baby Organ Harvesting,” Center for Medical Progress (CMP) President David Daleiden told lawmakers that videos obtained by his organization showed Planned Parenthood revealing that it had a “financial incentive” to sell the body parts of aborted babies and discussing their brutal abortion practices.
“These video clips from the subpoenaed congressional footage are just a small part of incredibly disturbing and incriminating undercover conversations that prove Planned Parenthood sells baby parts,” Daleiden <a href="https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/2024/03/new-videos-planned-parenthood-seeks-1500-per-fetal-liver-financial-incentive-docs-can-pull-off-a-leg-or-two-to-hide-partial-birth-abortions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “Planned Parenthood and their allies tried to cover up this footage for eight years because of the brutal facts it reveals about their taxpayer-funded business to kill and sell vulnerable infants.”
The hearing was hosted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), and Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL). The CMP exploded onto the scene in 2015 after it first released footage <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-journalists-who-exposed-planned-parenthoods-baby-body-parts-trade-found-guilty?utm_campaign=dw_newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=housefile&amp;utm_content=non_insiders&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-80WqjFl8ts5THjH_X0GnN5taykN-kZmaZzJvVcIYKJHqzrWikAaeg5NTSzUUZHabcQGKdDhdPLX7vbBL26nFT8jL5tXg&amp;_hsmi=79496569" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showing</a> Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of body parts from aborted babies.
The clips played on Tuesday before the lawmakers were recorded years ago, but were previously unable to be released due to court order.
In one clip played during the testimony, a woman identified by CMP as Planned Parenthood New York City’s Medical Director for Abortion Services Dr. Stacy De-Lin is told by a Center for Medical Progress investigator that she “could pay you $1,000, up to $1,500 for a liver.”
De-Lin responded by saying, “Yeah, that’s great,” and, “I think a financial incentive from you guys like, to the people we have to get this approved from, will be very happy about it,” according to the video shared by CMP.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Congressional Hearing - Planned Parenthood New York City Seeks &quot;Financial Incentive&quot; of $1,500/Liver" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_h9PVygESCQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
CMP said that another one of the videos showed then-Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ann Schutt-Aine discussing ways to get around federal law banning partial birth abortions.
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“If I’m seeing that I’m in fear that it’s about to come to the umbilicus [navel], I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not PBA [partial-birth abortion],” Schutt-Aine said, according to the CMP video.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Congressional Hearing - Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Will &quot;Pull Off a Leg or Two&quot; to Hide Sales" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_-dfq_IlHJc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In a different video featuring one of Schutt-Aine’s colleagues, an individual identified by CMP as Planned Parenthood employee Tram Nguyen says that sometimes an arm is ripped off the unborn baby during an abortion. “[O]ther days it’s [the fetus is] like more intact where it’s like maybe only like an arm that’s disarticulated,” she said, the CMP video shows.
Another video showed Planned Parenthood trainer Dr. Uta Landy reading from quotes about people who had been trained to do abortions, according to CMP.
“My coping mechanism is to focus on the baby/fetus. Reverence for something that was once alive and now it’s not,” one person said. Another said, “An eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross,” prompting laughter from the abortionists in the audience.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Congressional Hearing - Planned Parenthood Abortion Trainer: &quot;An Eyeball Just Fell Down Into My Lap&quot;" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8QPSNujRmKk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Planned Parenthood did not immediately return request for comment.

Last Abortion Clinic In Missouri Forced To Close At End Of May

‘Pull Off A Leg Or Two’: Footage Shows Reported Planned Parenthood Employee Discussing Brutal Abortion Practices

Social Issues

U.S.

Sen. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/steve-daines" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Steve Daines</a> (R-Montana) praised the federal investigation into the University of Pittsburgh after the school was accused of illegally harvesting fetal tissue from aborted babies for experimentation. 
It was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-investigation-opened-into-pitt-over-fetal-tissue-experiments-emails-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealed last month</a> through emails obtained by a public records request from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) and Judicial Watch that the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general had been looking into Pitt over fetal tissue experiments funded in part by the National Institute of Health, first reported on by CMP in 2019. These experiments included scalping 5-month-old fetuses in order to stitch their scalps and back skin onto lab rats and transporting fetal kidneys to other researchers.
“After years of calling for an investigation into the barbaric research practices happening at the University of Pittsburgh, I’m glad to see the inspector general finally take this seriously. Exploiting the body parts of aborted children is not only repulsive but it has been proven ineffective in producing clinical treatments. It must be stopped,” Daines, founder of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, told The Daily Wire. 
Daines has previously pushed for an investigation into Pitt and government funding of the fetal tissue experiments, signing onto a September 2021 <a href="https://www.daines.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/University%20of%20Pittsburgh%20Letter1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> urging HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and then-NIH Director Francis Collins to look into the program. 
“Exploiting the body parts of aborted children for research purposes is repulsive and should stop, regardless of the outcome hoped for by researchers. Research using abortive fetal tissue is unethical, wrong, and has also been proven ineffective. Despite being used in clinical research since the 1920s, fetal tissue has not produced a single clinical treatment,” the letter from congressional Republicans said. 
The emails released last month show confirmation of an HHS investigation into Pitt over the issue since at least October 2021, one month after the letter from congressional Republicans. The status of the investigation is unclear, but the HHS Office of Inspector General previously told The Daily Wire that it could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation, should there be any.”
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Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), one of the signers of the September 2021 letter to Becerra, has said that he has been given no answers on the issue either, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=343088547705269" target="_blank" rel="noopener">saying</a> that HHS pointed him to an investigation done by a law firm hired by Pitt to look at the fetal tissue program. 
Pitt has denied any wrong doing, saying that it did not break any federal laws with its programs.
“As we have stated in the past: Fetal tissue research plays a critical role in advancing life-saving discoveries. We remain committed to maintaining robust internal controls and to extending our record of compliance at the state and federal levels, and we take these responsibilities seriously,” a Pitt spokesman <a href="https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/report-fetal-tissue">said</a> in January 2022. 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-investigation-opened-into-pitt-over-fetal-tissue-experiments-emails-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Federal Investigation Opened Into Pitt Over Fetal Tissue Experiments, Emails Show</a>

Senators Meet For Their Weekly Policy Luncheons

Senator Praises Federal Investigation Into ‘Barbaric’ Experiments At University Of Pittsburgh

Francis Collins

Inspector general

Steve Daines

University of Pittsburgh

Xavier Becerra

The inspector general for the Department of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/health-and-human-services" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Health and Human Services</a> (HHS) opened up an investigation into the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/university-of-pittsburgh" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Pittsburgh</a> after it was accused of illegally harvesting fetal tissue from aborted babies for experimentation, according to newly released emails. 
The documents were obtained as part of a public records request from Judicial Watch and the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), the organization that released footage in 2015 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-journalists-who-exposed-planned-parenthoods-baby-body-parts-trade-found-guilty?utm_campaign=dw_newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=housefile&amp;utm_content=non_insiders&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-80WqjFl8ts5THjH_X0GnN5taykN-kZmaZzJvVcIYKJHqzrWikAaeg5NTSzUUZHabcQGKdDhdPLX7vbBL26nFT8jL5tXg&amp;_hsmi=79496569" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showing</a> Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of body parts from aborted babies. The <a href="https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/JW-v-HHS-Univ-Pitt-docs-03045.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new emails</a> show university officials confirming in November 2021 that they had been subpoenaed by the HHS Office of Inspector General agent.
“The University of Pittsburgh has been a center for some of the most barbaric experiments, government funded experiments, on the body parts of late-term aborted babies,” CMP President David Daleiden told The Daily Wire. “We now have the first confirmation with these FOIA documents that this is all subject of a formal federal law enforcement investigation of the OIG [Office of Inspector General].”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨BREAKING: Newly released FOIA documents confirm the existence of a federal law enforcement investigation of an NIH-funded program at the University of Pittsburgh that harvested fetal kidneys from late-term abortions performed by Planned Parenthood doctors. <a href="https://twitter.com/PPFA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PPFA</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/PittTweet?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PittTweet</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NIH?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NIH</a>… <a href="https://t.co/g3QgiZNDYt">pic.twitter.com/g3QgiZNDYt</a>
&mdash; Center for Medical Progress (@CtrMedProgress) <a href="https://twitter.com/CtrMedProgress/status/1734665688214905157?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 12, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In 2019, the CMP first reported on the gruesome experiments conducted at Pitt. These experiments <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-facilitated-gruesome-taxpayer-funded-experiments-with-aborted-fetuses" target="_blank" rel="noopener">included</a> scalping five-month-old fetuses in order to stitch their scalps and back skin onto lab rats and transporting fetal kidneys to other researchers.
According to the emails, Pitt’s Senior Vice Chancellor for Research Dr. Rob Rutenba acknowledged the existence of a federal probe into the school in response to an email from NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Dr. Michael Lauer requesting information on the fetal tissue projects at the university. 
“With regard to your request for documentation/information, please be aware that we received a subpoena from HHS OIG requesting similar documentation on October 28, 2021,” Rutenba wrote on Friday, November 2021. “We are happy to provide the requested information to both you and the HHS OIG, however, [redacted] instructed us not to provide the documentation you have requested information until he has had the opportunity to speak with you.”
The status of the HHS OIG investigation is not known. “We don’t know the results of the OIG investigation yet. We don’t know if the OIG has further referred that investigation to the FBI or the Department of Justice. The University of Pittsburgh has been completely in damage control mode,” Daleiden said. 
Agents with the HHS OIG have the ability to make arrests, conduct surveillance, serve search warrants, and seize evidence. The HHS OIG office told The Daily Wire that they could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation, should there be any.”
The scrutiny on Pitt focuses on its GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project (GUDMAP) program, which is believed to have run from 2016-2021. Daleiden describes the program as “an NIH-sponsored program for harvesting and distributing late-term aborted fetal kidneys and other body parts to other NIH-funded projects across the country.” 
In response to the reports and allegations of illegal activities, Pitt hired an “outside law firm” to look at its fetal tissue experiment program. The report from the firm claimed that Pitt was in compliance with state and federal law and the university has denied any wrongdoing.
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“As we have stated in the past: Fetal tissue research plays a critical role in advancing life-saving discoveries. We remain committed to maintaining robust internal controls and to extending our record of compliance at the state and federal levels, and we take these responsibilities seriously,” a Pitt spokesman <a href="https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/news/report-fetal-tissue" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in January 2022. 
Republicans have <a href="https://www.lankford.senate.gov/news/press-releases/lankford-bicameral-members-want-immediate-check-on-claims-of-fetal-tissue-research-at-university-of-pittsburgh/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">continued</a> to push for a review of Pitt’s activities and have demanded an audit from the HHS inspector general. 
“I think that the fact that a federal law enforcement agency like OIG thought that the information and allegations about the grant application were serious enough to open an investigation shows that the issue of fetal trafficking and selling aborted baby parts is not going away for the abortion industry,” Daleiden said. 
The University of Pittsburgh did not immediately return a request for comment.

US-POLITICS-GOVERNMENT-HEALTH

Federal Investigation Opened Into Pitt Over Fetal Tissue Experiments, Emails Show

Department of Health and Human Services

Education

Judicial Watch

On Tuesday, the <a href="https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/fetal-trafficking-under-oath/testimony/">Center for Medical Progress</a> (CMP) released an explosive video that appears to show Planned Parenthood executives admitting that they charged a fee to medical companies for aborted baby body parts directly, despite the taxpayer-funded organization claiming their only &#8220;fees&#8221; were for transportation and other legal services.
David Daleiden, project lead for CMP, alleged in a press release that the video (which can be viewed below) is more confirmation that Planned Parenthood lied to the public and Congress about aborted baby trafficking.
“The time has come for federal consequences for Planned Parenthood,” <a href="https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/2020/05/planned-parenthood-testimony-on-selling-baby-parts-unsealed-new-videos-released/">Daleiden</a> said in a statement. “Planned Parenthood lied to the public and to Congress, but now there is no longer any reasonable doubt that Planned Parenthood sold fetal body parts, commodifying living children in the womb and treating pregnant women like a cash crop.&#8221;
&#8220;The U.S. Department of Justice must escalate the enforcement of laws against fetal trafficking to the highest level of priority,&#8221; he added.
The video, which is of court records and proceedings, shows emails and contracts, and features testimony from Planned Parenthood executives appearing to discuss the selling of baby body parts at certain corporation affiliates.
Pro-life organization <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/bombshell-planned-parenthood-admits-oath-aborted-parts/">LiveAction</a> argues that the video &#8220;disputes the argument that money received was nothing more than reimbursement for costs sustained by Planned Parenthood. Testimony revealed that payment was only made to Planned Parenthood if StemExpress was able to obtain &#8216;usable&#8217; body parts from one of its abortion centers — meaning Planned Parenthood deceived the public when it claimed it only collected reimbursements for employees’ time and costs.&#8221;
As noted by CMP, &#8220;42 U.S. Code 289g-2 broadly forbids the exchange of valuable consideration for fetal tissue.&#8221;
&#8220;While the law allows for reimbursements of specific costs when donating fetal organs, those reimbursements must meet specific guidelines;&#8221; LiveAction continued, &#8220;they must be fees associated with transportation, processing, and other such costs. Planned Parenthood did none of these things, yet they collected money when they provided StemExpress with marketable body parts.&#8221;
Additionally, while the abortion giant told The New York Times that they &#8220;rebuffed&#8221; a contract to sell aborted baby livers for $750 each and $1600 for liver/thymus pairs, emails and testimony from Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Senior Director of Abortion Access Tram Nguyen appears to reveal that she was looking to &#8220;move forward&#8221; with a deal.
At just one affiliate, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, the clinic reportedly took in $25,000 in just three months from deals for aborted baby body parts, invoices showed. Founder and CEO of Planned Parenthood partner Advanced Bioscience Resources, Linda Tracy, was repeatedly told by her lawyer on video not to disclose how much the company was taking in.
Planned Parenthood is currently not charged with any violations of U.S. code and has yet to fall under an investigation over the matter of selling or exchanging fetal tissue.
&#8220;PPMM does over 17,000 abortions a year, and <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/unsealed-invoices-planned-parenthood-daleiden-25k">unsealed invoices</a> show PPMM making $25,000 in just 3 months from StemExpress,&#8221; CMP said. &#8220;When asked how much money an abortion clinic could make per year from selling fetal body parts, the founder and CEO of Planned Parenthood partner Advanced Bioscience Resources, Linda Tracy, was forbidden by her lawyer to answer.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-heres-why-planned-parenthood-booted-lenan-amanda-prestigiacomo">REPORT: Here’s Why Planned Parenthood Booted Leana Wen As President. It’s Unbelievable.</a>
WATCH:
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The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Cecile Richards

WATCH: Unsealed Video Shows Planned Parenthood Execs Under Oath Discussing Baby Body Parts Sales

On Monday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, who is also a <a href="https://firstliberty.org/team/josh-hammer/">constitutional attorney</a> by training, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEFIlHWRTr8">joined</a> &#8220;Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler&#8221; on One America News Network to discuss California&#8217;s recent <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20902884/california-deepfake-political-ban-election-2020">passing</a> of a law banning so-called &#8220;deep fake&#8221; videos when those videos are aired close to an election. As <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20902884/california-deepfake-political-ban-election-2020">explained</a> by The Verge, California&#8217;s law &#8220;makes it a crime to distribute [within 60 days of an election] audio or video that gives a false, damaging impression of a politician’s words or actions.&#8221; However, as The Verge continues to explain, &#8220;[p]otentially deceptive video or audio will also be allowed if it includes a disclaimer noting that it’s fake.&#8221;
The issue, as it appeared to Wheeler and Hammer, is the danger of politicians delegating power to judges to ban forms of audio or video that they, using their discretion, determine to be deceptive. Wheeler and Hammer both discussed the example of David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress, whose videos exposing systemic corruption at Planned Parenthood were decried for years by the Left as &#8220;deceptively edited&#8221; before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stated, in a footnote earlier this year, that the videos were not deceptively edited. As Hammer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fifth-circuit-panel-center-medical-progress-josh-hammer">reported</a> at the time for The Daily Wire, the Fifth Circuit opinion&#8217;s sixth footnote reads:
<blockquote>In fact, the record reflects that [the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s Office of Inspector General] had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited. And the plaintiffs did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage. Moreover, the district court also suggested that there was no evidence that any of [Planned Parenthood&#8217;s] research was federally funded, so the regulations relied on by OIG might be inapplicable. But the record actually establishes that the UTMB study was funded by the National Institute of Health.</blockquote>
With that context in mind, Wheeler began by asking Hammer whether California&#8217;s law could even withstand a First Amendment challenge. Hammer said that the issue is &#8220;probably right on the line&#8221; of unconstitutionality, and proceeded to explain why the law&#8217;s delegation of discretionary power to judges is problematic:
<blockquote>You know, it&#8217;s probably right on the line. I mean this is in California, so this would ultimately get appealed to the California Supreme Court and &#8230; if it&#8217;s a First Amendment challenge, [would] actually go to the Ninth Circuit because we need a federal court [for that]. These are liberal courts; traditionally, over the past 15-20 years, the Left has increasingly sided against free speech. So I could see the courts there upholding it.
But you know, here&#8217;s the thing, Liz. Anthony Kennedy — someone who I am NOT a fan of, I would be mortified to share on national television some of the things I&#8217;ve said in my private life about Anthony Kennedy — but if there&#8217;s one thing that Anthony Kennedy was wonderful on throughout his entire career, it was free speech. And he really said it best in the landmark case of <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf">Citizens United v. FEC</a> in 2010. Kennedy said, quote: &#8220;It is our law and our tradition that more speech, not less, is the governing rule.&#8221; And that&#8217;s kind of the classic American axiom — that is how we have always comported ourselves in the public square and the realm of politics. &#8230; The way the combat speech is with more speech. It is not to attempt to write vaguely worded statutes that &#8230; take power away from the elected political branch and ultimately are just empowering federal judges to interpret these broadly worded statutes. That&#8217;s what this is doing — it&#8217;s empowering judges to decry it as right and wrong. It&#8217;s an anti-democratic movement it is a totalitarian power grab and really, people of all political stripes should not stand for this.</blockquote>
WATCH:
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Josh Hammer OANN screen grab 10.07.19

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: California Bans ‘Deep Fake’ Videos Close To Elections

Constitution

First Amendment

Judicial Branch

Judiciary

Lawsuit

During the preliminary hearing this week in the criminal case against undercover journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, a &#8220;semi-retired&#8221; Planned Parenthood executive admitted that the abortion business had no ban on altering abortion procedures in order to better harvest baby body parts that would later be sold, allegedly for a profit.
According to reporting from Lianne Laurence at <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/abortion-director-at-daleiden-hearing-we-had-no-ban-on-changing-technique-to-harvest-better-baby-body-parts">LifeSiteNews</a>, &#8220;Doe 10,&#8221; the former medical director at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles until 2013, &#8220;admitted under questioning Wednesday by Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society and lawyer for Daleiden, that the Planned Parenthood affiliates she worked in had no rule against changing the abortion procedure &#8216;technique&#8217; in order to obtain better baby body parts.&#8221;
As noted by Laurence, &#8220;federal consent rules stipulate a doctor cannot change the method of a medical procedure without a patient&#8217;s consent.&#8221;
&#8220;&#8216;Doe 10&#8217; testified that Planned Parenthood abortionists &#8216;would never change the method&#8217; but admitted Planned Parenthood began making the distinction between &#8216;technique&#8217; and &#8216;method&#8217; after the [Center for Medical Progress] undercover videos were released,” the report noted.
&#8220;We had to grapple with fallout from videos,&#8221; the abortion executive, who is not allowed to be named, admitted to the court. &#8220;We had to be more specific.&#8221;
Mr. Breen, who is representing Daleiden, emphasized to the outlet that &#8220;Doe 10&#8221; was essentially playing semantics. &#8220;There is no distinction between &#8216;method&#8217; and &#8216;technique&#8217; in the law, and there is no distinction between method and technique in medical ethics,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;And so this artificial distinction that Planned Parenthood abortion doctors created so that they could get better fetal tissue is absolutely illegal and unethical and our witnesses, when we get to put on our case for the defense, they’re going to talk about that,&#8221; Breen noted.
The attorney claimed that changing the abortion procedure to better harvest aborted babies&#8217; body parts likely puts a woman at greater risk. &#8220;We&#8217;re getting testimony that switching the fetus position from the normal position of vertex to breech increases dilation so you can get better fetal tissue, well, what does increasing dilation also do, it causes harm or can cause harm to a woman’s cervix which then can cause her to be unable to carry a pregnancy down the road,&#8221; he explained.
Daleiden and Merritt, journalists for the Center for Medical Progress facing up to ten years behind bars, were charged with 15 felonies in March of 2017 for their shocking undercover videos about the abortion industry. &#8220;Doe 10&#8221; is featured in their work, which has been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42352/fifth-circuit-panel-center-medical-progress-josh-hammer">corroborated as undoctored by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit</a>, allegedly haggling over prices of fetal remains while sipping wine and joking about wanting a &#8220;Lamborghini.&#8221; She also spoke about adjusting abortion procedure technique to make it less &#8220;crunchy,&#8221; therefore keeping baby body parts better intact.
As noted by the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/planned-parenthood-was-just-forced-to-admit-in-court-to-harvesting-aborted-fetal-parts">Washington Examiner</a> earlier in the week, &#8220;Doe 7&#8221; &#8220;admitted&#8221; during the preliminary hearing &#8220;to procuring fetal tissue from the abortions she performed at Planned Parenthood,&#8221; as well as &#8220;being familiar&#8221; with the embattled StemExpress.
&#8220;She testified that she was aware of cases where money had been exchanged as part of such transactions,&#8221; the report said. &#8220;It is worth noting that StemExpress and Planned Parenthood Northern California are both under ongoing FBI and U.S. Department of Justice investigation for selling fetal organs and tissue illegally.&#8221;

Planned Parenthood Exec Makes Major Admission About Baby Body Part Harvesting

Department of Justice

Let no one say he is concerned about attacks on the press if he is not worried about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47471/journalists-charged-15-felonies-undercover-videos-amanda-prestigiacomo">this</a> attack on the press. As The Daily Wire <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/47471/journalists-charged-15-felonies-undercover-videos-amanda-prestigiacomo">reported</a> this week, the case against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt is moving forward in California. Daleiden and Merritt are the heroic undercover journalists who infiltrated Planned Parenthood and exposed a vast conspiracy to traffick in the sale of human body parts. What they uncovered is absurdly unethical and obviously criminal, and the state of California wants to punish them — the journalists, not the criminals — for it.
It has been decided that the case can proceed, which means that Democratic California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Planned Parenthood supporter and grateful recipient of Planned Parenthood donations, will lead the prosecution against the people who embarrassed Planned Parenthood. Before Becerra, it was now-Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) who received money from the abortion giant and expressed support for the abortion giant, all while pursuing legal penalties against the abortion giant&#8217;s enemies. Nothing to see here, I suppose. Just explicit, in-your-face political corruption is all.
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Also, an assault on journalism. Planned Parenthood complains that its &#8220;privacy&#8221; was violated because Daleiden deceived them and recorded them surreptitiously. But of course Daleiden recorded them surreptitiously — that&#8217;s the whole point of undercover journalism. If a secret is being kept from the public, and it is a secret that the public has a right to know (such as the secret that the organization we are funding to the tune of $500 million a year is also engaged in the most macabre form of human trafficking imaginable), then the only way to bring the truth to light is to get the secret-holders to spill the beans without realizing that they&#8217;re spilling the beans. That is the essence of all undercover journalism. If Daleiden and Merritt are successfully prosecuted for it, then the groundwork has been laid to criminalize all forms of undercover journalism.
Such a chilling campaign against the freedom of the press should attract the attention of the press itself. But, with a few exceptions, the press has no interest in speaking out against this. Partly because they might not recognize real journalism when they see it, but mostly because ideology comes first for our news media, and there is no ideological advantage in highlighting the plight of Daleiden and Merritt.
It will be argued that the Planned Parenthood videos were &#8220;deceptively edited&#8221; and thus not legitimate works of journalism. This is simply false. Abortion apologists shout &#8220;deceptively edited&#8221; as a reflex anytime this subject comes up, but there is absolutely no truth to the assertion. Indeed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit conducted its own investigation and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42352/fifth-circuit-panel-center-medical-progress-josh-hammer">concluded</a> that &#8220;the video was authentic and not deceptively edited.&#8221;
Even better, Planned Parenthood commissioned its own forensic analysis of the footage and also arrived, unhappily, at the <a href="http://ppfa.pr-optout.com/ViewAttachment.aspx?EID=mr9WXYw4u2IxYnni1dBRVk3HDyuhhkPMnFMCvK5fVC8%3d">conclusion</a> that there was no &#8220;widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.&#8221; Perhaps that is worth repeating in italics: Planned Parenthood&#8217;s own analysis disagrees with the claim that the videos were deceptively edited. 
If, then, the videos were not deceptively edited, it seems we are left with the unavoidable fact that Planned Parenthood officials really did what they appear to be doing on video. That is, haggling over the price of baby limbs and organs. And if that is the case, then the organization is guilty of rampant criminal conduct. And if the organization is guilty of rampant criminal conduct, and Daleiden discovered it and reported his findings accurately, then he is a journalist doing exactly what journalists are meant to do. If he is not allowed to do journalism, that would have disastrous implications for all real journalists everywhere. Though I suppose that is a small and ever-dwindling group.

WALSH: California Is Prosecuting Journalists For Doing Journalism, And The News Media Doesn’t Care

Leftism

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/040119zor_ed9f.pdf">declined to issue a writ of certiorari</a> to hear an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to dismiss a key abortion-related case. The writ to dismiss the underlying lawsuit was sought by David Daleiden&#8217;s group, the Center for Medical Progress.
The Hill <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/436745-supreme-court-rejects-request-from-anti-abortion-activists-to-throw">reports</a>:
<blockquote>
The Center for Medical Progress had requested the Supreme Court toss out Planned Parenthood&#8217;s claims that they committed federal conspiracy and wiretapping violations. Planned Parenthood also claims that the Center for Medical Progress violated California law by fraudulently gaining access to its facilities. &#8230;
The Center for Medical Progress, led by activist David Daleiden, had argued it was exercising its First Amendment rights in making the videos. The group also claimed that the Planned Parenthood lawsuit was in violation of California &#8220;anti-SLAPP&#8221; laws, which prevent strategic legal action aimed at silencing individuals or groups.
</blockquote>
The denial of a writ of certiorari confirms that Planned Parenthood&#8217;s suit against the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) in the Ninth Circuit will proceed in full. As CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-rejects-anti-abortion-groups-appeal-over-videos/">states</a>, &#8220;Planned Parenthood&#8217;s lawsuit alleges that CMP engaged in wire and mail fraud, committed illegal secret recording and trespassing. The pro-abortion rights group is accusing CMP of lying to the IRS and the state of California in order to illegally get tax-exempt status. It also says that CMP set up a fake health care firm and used fake IDs to register at a private medical conferences on reproductive health.&#8221;
Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress have attained something closely akin to quasi-celebrity status on the political Right ever since the initial release of their undercover pro-life videos exposing Planned Parenthood. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42352/fifth-circuit-panel-center-medical-progress-josh-hammer">reported</a> in January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently confirmed in a footnote that the Center for Medical Progress did not &#8220;deceptively edit&#8221; its underlying videos. Footnote six of January&#8217;s Fifth Circuit <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2019/Press/PP%20Opinion.pdf">opinion</a> in Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Family Planning and Preventative Health Services, Inc. v. Smith reads:
<blockquote>
In fact, the record reflects that [the Texas Health and Human Services Commission&#8217;s Office of Inspector General] had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited. And the plaintiffs did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage. Moreover, the district court also suggested that there was no evidence that any of PPGC&#8217;s research was federally funded, so the regulations relied on by OIG might be inapplicable. But the record actually establishes that the UTMB study was funded by the National Institute of Health.
</blockquote>
And as The Daily Wire noted at the time, in summarizing the key footnote:
<blockquote>
In other words, a federal appellate court has weighed in on the veracity of the infamous Center for Medical Progress videos, over which Center for Medical Progress Founder David Daleiden faced criminal charges in both California and Texas (the latter since dropped), and has concluded that the underlying video in question in this litigation was &#8220;not deceptively edited.&#8221; The ramifications of this finding in the wider abortion debate and, specifically, in the debates over defunding Planned Parenthood, will potentially be huge.
</blockquote>
Alas, those &#8220;ramifications&#8221; do not apparently now include a granted writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss Planned Parenthood&#8217;s legal claims against the Center for Medical Progress.

In Win For Planned Parenthood, Supreme Court Declines To Dismiss Key Abortion Case

Supreme Court

Tonight, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit released an <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2019/Press/PP%20Opinion.pdf">opinion</a> in Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Family Planning and Preventative Health Services, Inc. v. Smith, in which the Court reversed the district court&#8217;s preliminary injunction preventing Texas from terminating state Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. The panel&#8217;s decision represents a win for pro-lifers and general foes of Planned Parenthood.
The opinion features a graphic depiction of the tissue of an aborted unborn child. But perhaps even more notably, the opinion&#8217;s sixth footnote, pertaining to the underlying Center for Medical Progress&#8217;s <a href="http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/cmp/investigative-footage/">undercover video</a> footage that led Texas to terminate its funding, says the following:
<blockquote>
In fact, the record reflects that [the Texas Health and Human Services Commission&#8217;s Office of Inspector General] had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited. And the plaintiffs did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage. Moreover, the district court also suggested that there was no evidence that any of PPGC&#8217;s research was federally funded, so the regulations relied on by OIG might be inapplicable. But the record actually establishes that the UTMB study was funded by the National Institute of Health.
</blockquote>
In other words, a federal appellate court has weighed in on the veracity of the infamous Center for Medical Progress videos, over which Center for Medical Progress Founder David Daleiden faced criminal charges in both California and Texas (the latter since dropped), and has concluded that the underlying video in question in this litigation was &#8220;not deceptively edited.&#8221; The ramifications of this finding in the wider abortion debate and, specifically, in the debates over defunding Planned Parenthood, will potentially be huge. Indeed, pro-lifers on Twitter have already begun celebrating.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This is huge news tonight, and a big pro-life win worth celebrating. <a href="https://t.co/9lw368YCYW">https://t.co/9lw368YCYW</a>
&#8212; Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) <a href="https://twitter.com/xan_desanctis/status/1086057171157159936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
There are numerous other quote-worthy portions of the opinion. Here is the opinion&#8217;s brutal description of a certain portion of the underlying Center for Medical Progress video, in the context of a candid discussion over the federal ban on partial-birth abortion:
<blockquote>
Dr. Nguyen confirmed that the [Planned Parenthood] abortion facility can obtain intact liver and thymus. The doctor stated, sarcastically, that while federal law (prohibiting partial birth abortions) restricts a facility from intentionally retrieving an intact fetus, [Planned Parenthood] can make it happen by signing a form that they did not so &#8220;intend.&#8221; Nguyen also stated that obtaining intact specimens of liver, thymus, and neural tissue depends upon the amount of cervical dilation of the patient and the patient&#8217;s pain tolerance. The doctor noted risks associated with fetal tissue procurement that [Planned Parenthood] is willing to take because &#8220;it is for a good cause.&#8221; The doctor acknowledged that two particular [Planned Parenthood] doctors can alter the abortion procedure to meet a researcher&#8217;s request. Relying on these statements, others like them, and their expert testimony, [the Texas Health and Human Services Commission&#8217;s Office of Inspector General] sought to justify its termination decision.
</blockquote>
The whole opinion is well worth reading. Judge Edith H. Jones and Senior Judge E. Grady Jolly signed onto the opinion. Judge Catharina Haynes was on the panel but concurred only in the judgment.

Fifth Circuit Panel: Center For Medical Progress Abortion Videos Are NOT ‘Deceptively Edited’

Texas

The 15 felony charges California Attorney General Xavier Becerra leveled at two activist journalists behind a series of explosive Planned Parenthood undercover videos is such an egregious abuse of the law that even the Los Angeles Times felt compelled to call out the Democrat A.G. for his &#8220;<a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-planned-parenthood-charges-20170330-story.html">disturbing overrreach</a>.&#8221; 
On Tuesday, Becerra <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/14885/tyranny-california-criminally-charges-undercover-ben-shapiro">charged</a> David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress with 15 felony counts for violating the state&#8217;s two-party consent law by recording interviews with Planned Parenthood officials without their consent. The videos set off a series of investigations into the abortion provider&#8217;s disturbing practices involving the harvesting of &#8220;fetal tissue&#8221; &#8211; in other words, aborted baby body parts &#8211; and led to <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/tissue-731858-fetal-research.html">charges</a> against a few companies in the industry. As Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro notes, the footage included &#8220;high-ranking Planned Parenthood members joking about selling baby body parts for market rates and picking through baby body parts in order to demonstrate which sorts of body parts were available for sale for medical research, as well as talking about the best methods of abortion for procuring those baby body parts.&#8221;
While The Los Angeles Times dismisses outright the significance of the videos, saying simply that they were &#8220;heavily edited&#8221; &#8211; despite CMP having released the complete, unedited footage of the most controversial interviews &#8211; the paper makes clear that Becerra&#8217;s &#8220;disturbingly aggressive&#8221; charges have crossed the line:
<blockquote>
There&#8217;s no question that anti-abortion activist David Daleiden surreptitiously recorded healthcare and biomedical services employees across the state of California with the intent of discrediting the healthcare provider, Planned Parenthood &#8211; something his heavily edited videos failed to do. There&#8217;s also no question that it&#8217;s against state law to record confidential conversations without the consent of all the parties involved.
But that doesn&#8217;t mean that California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra should have charged Daleiden and his co-conspirator, Susan Merritt, with 15 felony counts &#8211; one for each of the 14 people recorded, and a 15th for conspiracy. It&#8217;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. Planned Parenthood and biomedical company StemExpress, which was also featured in the videos, have another remedy for the harm that was done to them: They can sue Daleiden and Merritt for damages. The state doesn&#8217;t need to threaten the pair with prison time. 
</blockquote>
The Times, like Shapiro, underscores that Dalieden and Merritt were acting as journalists attempting to expose the truth of a controversial issue, abortion and fetal tissue research. If the media wants to protect the freedom of the press, the media cannot turn its back on Dalieden and Merritt just because they do not agree with their values. Here&#8217;s The Times making that case: 
<blockquote>
In similar cases, we have denounced moves to criminalize such behavior, especially in the case of animal welfare investigators who have gone undercover at slaughterhouses and other agricultural businesses to secretly record horrific and illegal abuses of animals. That work, too, is aimed at revealing wrongdoing and changing public policy.
That&#8217;s why the state law forbidding recording of conversations should be applied narrowly, and to clear and egregious violations of privacy where the motive is personal gain.
</blockquote>
Kudos to the paper for being consistent on this issue. 
For more, read <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/14885/tyranny-california-criminally-charges-undercover-ben-shapiro">Shapiro&#8217;s take on the legal flaws of Becerra&#8217;s 14 two-party consent charges</a>.
More from the Daily Wire on this case: 
<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/14913/attorney-general-who-charged-pro-life-activists-james-barrett">AG Who Charged Activists For Exposing Planned Parenthood Received Thousands In Donations From Planned Parenthood</a>
<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/14908/kamala-harris-office-collaborated-planned-hank-berrien">Kamala Harris&#8217; Office Collaborated With Planned Parenthood To Target David Dalieden</a>
H/T <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2017/03/30/la-times-felony-charges-against-creators-of-planned-parenthood-videos-go-too-far/">John Sexton</a>

Even The LA Times Agrees: Felony Charges Against Activists Behind Planned Parenthood Videos A ‘Disturbing Overreach’

Ben Shapiro

Los Angeles Times

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