ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy
[7][8][9] Hannah Giles is an American conservative activist who achieved national attention alongside James O'Keefe as a featured player in videos they had secretly filmed in encounters at offices belonging to ACORN.
[11] O'Keefe, an activist-filmmaker and self-described "progressive radical" (media coverage describes him as a conservative),[12] worked for Morton Blackwell at the Leadership Institute.
[18] Giles and O'Keefe recorded the encounters using hidden cameras[8] and pretended to be seeking advice on how to run an illegal business[19] that included the use of underage girls in the sex trade.
[20][21][22] In the videos, O'Keefe included lead-in segments in which he wore a fur coat, top hat, sunglasses, and wielded a cane, giving viewers and the media the impression that he had dressed that way when visiting the ACORN offices.
Kaelke responded to the pair's requests for help setting up a child-prostitution ring on the video by claiming to be an ex-prostitute and exclaiming, "Heidi Fleiss is my hero!
"[28] The California Attorney General's investigation of Kaelke determined that "none of her claims" on the video were true, that "she was playing along with what she perceived as a joke", and there was "no evidence she had ever engaged in prostitution.
In the San Diego office, edited video showed ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera telling O'Keefe he had "contacts" in "Tijuana" to help get underage girls across the border.
[36] In response to release of the first videos, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said on Fox News on September 20, 2009, "[i]n a way, this was good for us, so what it did was show up to us what weaknesses we have, and we have moved swiftly ... in order to correct that."
[42] On October 21, O'Keefe and Giles released video footage of their visit to the Philadelphia office of ACORN at a National Press Club conference.
Susan Kinzie of The Washington Post noted that "the heavily edited footage includes audio of the two conservatives but none of the ACORN Housing Corp. worker's responses to their questions.
"[43] Carol Leonnig, a The Washington Post staff writer who attended the press conference, said in an interview that day on Fox News that, in explaining why the audio portion did not include the worker's responses, O'Keefe said, "on the one hand, the pair are concerned about the legal ramifications.
The federal government had ended contracts with the group related to organizing counts in urban areas for the Census and work for the IRS.
"[46] On March 22, 2010, National ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan says the organization's board decided to close remaining state affiliates and field offices by April 1 because of falling revenues.
[57] On September 24, the U.S. Treasury Department's Inspector General announced it would initiate a broader probe into "the government's oversight of tax-exempt organizations like ACORN when they engage in political activities.
[63] On December 22, 2009, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report on ACORN activities, commissioned by the House Judiciary Committee.
The CRS found that O'Keefe and Giles may have violated Maryland and California laws banning the recording of face-to-face conversations without consent of both parties.
[64][65] The New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, began an investigation on September 15, 2009, to ensure that state grants given to ACORN were properly spent.
[66] The New York City Council suspended all ACORN grants while the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office conducted an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the videos.
The report noted that the terms of the exchange did not exempt O'Keefe or Giles from being sued separately by the ACORN members filmed in the videos.
[73] The AG Office's report stated, "ACORN was not the criminal enterprise described by O'Keefe in his 'Chaos for Glory' statement – it did not receive billions in federal funds and did not control elections.
Regarding this contrast between the publicity related to the videos and what actually transpired, Attorney General Brown stated, "The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality.
[6][74] On September 15, Joshua Rhett Miller of Fox News accused the mainstream media of purposefully ignoring the story, and said that it was favoring the political left.
[20][75][76][77] Andrew Breitbart wrote in an article in The Washington Times that he had counseled Giles and O'Keefe to "offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released.
[80] Breitbart and reporters of Fox News stayed on message, complaining that the "mainstream media" did not respond promptly or cover the story in sufficient depth.
[85] Clark Hoyt, the New York Times public editor at the time, reviewed the raw footage and concluded that, regarding the statements by ACORN workers, “the most damning words match the transcripts and the audio, and do not seem out of context.”[86] In September 2009, before the investigations revealed the selective and heavy editing of the videos, Alexandra Fenwick of the Columbia Journalism Review accused the video ensemble of being a politically motivated piece that lacked context and did not present accurate information.
[citation needed] The Washington Post staff writers Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig wrote: Giles and O'Keefe have been criticized for accuracy problems.
[92] The Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes cleared ACORN employees in the local office of criminal wrongdoing on March 1, 2010, after a five-month investigation.
