David Robert Daleiden (born 1989)[1] is an American anti-abortion activist[2] who worked for Live Action before founding the Irvine, California-based Center for Medical Progress in 2013.
[7][8] Daleiden, an associate of Lila Rose, ran a Live Action chapter in 2007 and was the organization's director of research "during the early stages" of the project to make secret recordings of Planned Parenthood clinics.
[15] Fusion GPS, the production company Planned Parenthood hired in the wake of the scandal to debunk the videos, rigorously analyzed them and found what they considered to be "...'substantive omissions' on Daleiden's part.
"[16] The videos were shown to Republican Congressmen Trent Franks and Tim Murphy two weeks before being made publicly available, leading commentators to note that the timing of the release appeared to coincide with a bipartisan bill to raise money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
[25] On August 31, Orrick found Daleiden and his attorneys, Steve Cooley and Brentford Ferreira, owed $195,359 compensation to the National Abortion Federation for legal fees and increased security for "expenses incurred as a result of the violation of my Preliminary Injunction Order".
[27]: 1 [2]: 1 On January 25, 2016, a grand jury in Harris County, Texas that originally had investigated the Gulf Coast chapter of Planned Parenthood and cleared them of any wrongdoing,[15]: 1 instead indicted Daleiden on a felony count of tampering with governmental records by making and using a fake driver's license,[28] and a misdemeanor charge for emailing an offer to buy fetal tissue for $1,600.
[36] On July 26, 2016, Texas District Judge Brock Thomas dismissed the felony charges by ruling that the grand jury exceeded its authority by indicting Daleiden and Merritt when it was chartered only to investigate Planned Parenthood.
[15]: 1 [37] On March 28, 2017, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed 15 felony charges against Daleiden, alleging that he and associate Sandra Susan Merritt conspired to pose as BioMax employees in order to intentionally record confidential communications between themselves and Planned Parenthood employees in Century City (Los Angeles), Pasadena (Los Angeles), El Dorado (El Dorado), and San Francisco.
[38][39] On June 21, 2017, Superior Court Judge Christopher Hite dismissed fourteen of the charges, with leave to amend, on the grounds that they were legally insufficient because they did not include details such as the names of the alleged victims and the locations and dates of the videoed events.
The court, however, denied their claim that Daleiden was protected by California's Shield Law for acting as a citizen journalist, because the Department of Justice had sufficient probable cause of criminal activity to make the seizures.
[52] In October 2023, the United States Supreme Court declined to take up Daleiden's appeal, leaving in place the 9th Circuit's affirmation of the multi million dollar verdict.