Here's how my friends at the Trib explained it:
Videotaping covertly while posing as a pimp and prostitute wanting a loan to open a brothel featuring underage Latin American girls, the pair sought ACORN's advice. The resulting YouTube videos show ACORN staff, apparently undeterred by the shocking, blatantly felonious inquiry, offering helpful hints about evading tax, immigration and police scrutiny.Remember that?
Well Jimmy-boy got that one wrong and he's gotta pay for it.
From Huffingtonpost:
Conservative provocateur James O'Keefe agreed on Thursday to shell out $100,000 to former ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera to settle a longstanding lawsuit. Wonkette first reported the development, citing court documents.And Salon.com:
Vera was an employee of the activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in 2009 when O'Keefe and accomplice Hanna Giles traveled to his San Diego office -- dressed in pimp and prostitute attire -- to film a segment for their sting investigation, which used heavily edited footage to allege the group supported prostitution and tax-evasion. After the video's release, Vera was fired for "unacceptable conduct" over footage that appeared to show him advising the duo on how to set up a supposed child prostitution ring. It was later reported that Vera had contacted authorities and described the details of the encounter.
Conservative provocateur James O’Keefe has agreed to pay $100,000 and apologize to a former ACORN employee who was fired after being portrayed in one of O’Keefe’s undercover video stings.I wonder if any of this will get reported by Scaife's paper.
The ACORN sting was one of O’Keefe’s first and most successful operations, leading to a congressional prohibition on federal funding for ACORN that caused the group to collapse. But Juan Carlos Vera, a former employee whom O’Keefe and accomplice Hannah Giles secretly filmed in a California ACORN office, said the tape violated a state law against recording someone without their permission, so he sued the two conservative sting artists.
Giles settled this summer, but the suit against O’Keefe is still in federal court.
Now, according to documents obtained by Wonkette, Vera has agreed to drop the case against O’Keefe in exchange for $100,000 and acknowledgment from O’Keefe that the video did not include the fact that Vera had called the police during the sting. The settlement, dated Wednesday, adds that O’Keefe “regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family.” He has 30 days to pay up.
In an email exchange with Salon, O’Keefe confirmed the settlement and said a statement was forthcoming.
acknowledgment from O’Keefe that the video did not include the fact that Vera had called the police during the sting.
ReplyDeleteSo they want O’Keefe to lie about what happened to settle the wiretapping charge?
Rachel Maddow is a dishonest hack
Looks like Rachel Maddow did some dishonest "editing" at 6:56 to distort the CA AG report to make it look like Vera reported the “human smuggling” to the police immediately instead of 9 Days later.
Immediately after the couple left, Vera telephoned his cousin, Detective Alejandro Hernandez, at the National City Police Department. [He left a voicemail message for Detective Hernandez stating that some “crazy people” were in his office providing information. Vera did not explain
the substance of the conversation and did not make reference to prostitution or human smuggling on the message. He asked his cousin to call him back.
Speaking of idiotic ACORN related stories--I caught this one earlier this week:
ReplyDelete"A bizarre provision of the House Republicans’ short-term budget bill would strip ACORN of all federal funds even though 1) the government already withdrew all federal money from the organization and 2) the group no longer exists.
The Alliance of Community Organizations for Reform Now, an anti-poverty organization that advocated for low-income families, lost all of its federal funding after a selectively edited video released by conservative gadfly James O’Keefe appeared to show workers advising a pimp and a prostitute how to avoid the IRS. After the controversy, and the federal defunding that resulted from it, the liberal organization was disbanded in March 2010.
Independent investigations in California, Massachusetts and Brooklyn, N.Y., later cleared ACORN of any wrongdoing."
Next up?? Bachmann and Rand Paul vow to stop the US from paying any more money to the League of Nations--and halt all foreign aid to the Hapsburgh Empire.