Hannah Giles Needs Your Help
By Keli Carender | 09/25/09 | 02:32 PM EDT | 4 Comments
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has filed a lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart’s LLC, Breitbart.com, and the two intrepid undercover journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles. They broke the story about ACORN employees giving advice to a “pimp and prostitute” about how to cheat on their taxes, among other more nefarious bits of advice. Andrew Breitbart is the creator of the investigative blogs Big Hollywood and Big Government, and they also recently broke the NEA/White House conference call scandal.
The lawsuit brought forth by ACORN seeks to prevent any more videos from coming out, a possibility to which Breitbart has alluded, along with going for the jugular via “compensatory and punitive damages” of course. ACORN’s legal team asserts that O’Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart violated Maryland state law regarding two-party consent of all electronic surveillance.
When an organization that is funded by American taxpayers is as corrupt as ACORN is proving to be (don’t forget about the investigations and convictions of voter fraud across the country involving ACORN), are we not entitled to the truth about where our money is going? This organization is so rotten to the core they are fighting tooth and nail to halt the release of any more damaging evidence.
Breitbart et. al. will need help defending themselves, as ACORN will be using our tax money to persecute and defame these individuals. ACORN plays hardball and they will not rest until they have ruined the lives of those involved and sufficiently intimidated any other journalists into obedience and silence.
If you believe that you have a right to know what this vile and corrupt organization is doing with your money, and you believe that undercover journalists have a right to use this method of investigation (as others have for decades) without the fear of fines or undue burden in order to uncover the truth, then please consider visiting www.defendhannah.com and contributing to the Hannah Giles Defense Fund. She will need every cent to fight the millions that ACORN has at its disposal.
O'Keefe and Breitbart are reportedly setting up legal defense funds of their own; as soon as we have links, we'll update this post and pass them along.
As a side note: it may turn out that ACORN was operating illegally in Maryland. Let’s see if that comes up in the lawsuit.
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Quick note: I spoke directly with the Liberty Legal Institute, which is defending Hannah, and the website linked to in this article is indeed theirs (it is very sparse/simple, so visitors might question its authenticity).
Also, they have been having some glitches in donation processing and said they are making changes to the site at 3pm EDT which should fix this issue.
This is definitely a worthy cause. ACORN's goons must be stopped. Thanks for the link.
What about the idea that they were acting as journalists? As a novice it would seem like they should be protected that way, but it would be interesting to hear from an attorney here with feedback on that question.
I don't quite understand what the legal argument here is. If an ACORN employee did something wrong, she no longer has the protection of the laws and you should feel free to violate her privacy, rob and rape her? If one is seeking truth, one's actions in pursuit of that goal should be unconstrained by the law? Do y'all believe the Constitution gives a right to tape conversations, unbeknownst to the other participants, and so the Maryland law is invalid?
There's an awful lot of huffing and puffing about how terrible ACORN is, but very little explanation of why ACORN's lawsuit should fail as a legal matter.
Journalists don't get to violate the laws on privacy either. Check out the information from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:
"Twelve states require, under most circumstances, the consent of all parties to a conversation. Those jurisdictions are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington." - http://www.rcfp.org/taping/
After this kind of feedback on his apparent breach of state laws in the ACORN expose, no wonder James O'Keefe felt confident of conservative support when he went into Sen. Landrieu's office. He had plenty of reason to believe that conservatives would once again say that the ends justify the means.
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