Legal Jiu-Jitsu: Grand Jury Probing Planned Parenthood Indicts Video Hucksters Instead

The Texas legal system delivered a sort of poetic justice yesterday when a grand jury handed down an indictment of David Daleiden, the founder of the anti-choice Center for Medical Progress (CMP), and his associate Sandra Merritt. The charges included “tampering with a governmental record” and “illegally offer[ing] to purchase human organs.” At the same time the grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing.

Fox News

What’s surprising about this is that the grand jury was impaneled by a Republican District Attorney, who was appointed by a Republican governor, with the express purpose of going after Planned Parenthood for offences that were alleged in the deceptively edited CMP videos. From the very beginning Planned Parenthood and independent media demonstrated that the videos were flagrantly fraudulent in their depiction of the women’s health organization. And the members of the grand jury obviously agreed.

Since this news broke, conservative media has reacted with indignant fury declaring that justice was subverted by some undisclosed evil force. Never mind that the anti-choice activists were the ones who pushed for the probe and got everything they asked for in terms of its implementation. Now they are complaining that the charges against CMP are “a political hit job.” Those are exactly the words of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and their resident legal spinner Judge Andrew Napolitano:

Kelly: Now Judge, what does this mean?
Napolitano: This means that a political prosecutor has injected herself in a very serious issue about whether or not Planned Parenthood was profiting from the abortion of babies by selling body parts. […]
Kelly: So does this sound like a political hit job? Or what is this?
Napolitano: Absolutely. This is a political hit job.

They would actually be right if they were talking about why the grand jury was impaneled in the first place. But they have no rational argument for that accusation about the conclusion. It was their case, with their people, but unfortunately for them, the facts weren’t on their side.

What’s more, every federal, congressional, and state investigation into this matter has cleared Planned Parenthood. That includes many agencies in conservative states with Republican governors. Media Matters has been tracking these legal outcomes from the following authorities (so far): U.S. Dept. Of Health And Human Services, Massachusetts Attorney General, Indiana Department of Health, South Dakota Attorney General, Georgia Department of Public Health, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, Missouri Attorney General, Washington State Attorney General, and Kansas State Board of Healing Arts.

The spectacle of having a Republican generated grand jury return indictments against the parties who sought the investigation isn’t really that surprising considering the sordid history of these particular scoundrels. CMP cut their pseudo-journalistic teeth with the notoriously dishonest video hack, James O’Keefe. The legal misadventures of O’Keefe include his having been arrested and convicted for nefarious activities in the office of a U.S. senator. He was also forced to pay a $100,000 judgement to an ACORN employee that he defamed. When a right-wing group tried to get Texas to investigate allegations of voter registration fraud the prosecutors examined O’Keefe’s video “evidence” and concluded that it “was little more than a canard and political disinformation.”

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

This is the predictable result of biased activists masquerading as reporters in order to produce the propaganda necessary to advance their dishonest agenda. They have no respect for journalism or ethical reporting. They are tightly focused on defaming their targets to achieve their purely political goals. And now it is clear that they are so determined to push their campaign of lies that they will violate the law to do so. Fortunately, at least this time, they got caught and are going to suffer the consequences.

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2 thoughts on “Legal Jiu-Jitsu: Grand Jury Probing Planned Parenthood Indicts Video Hucksters Instead

  1. A “political hit job” says FOX—and the nation knows how familiar FOX is with that as in the House multiple committee investigations about Benghazi which blew up their multiple faces when Kevin McCarthy admitted on nationwide TV that its main purpose was to lower Hillary’s poll numbers. Another political hit job has been the 62 votes to undo the ACA (Obamacare) that the House does almost as often as its roll call. I think that merely an effort to try to convince their constituents that they are doing something beside grousing about our fantastic president. Planned Parenthood was NEVER guilty of anything—except a smug spokeswoman on the altered videos. But look at the criminal activity that engendered in the Colo. Spgs. shooting when the terrorist announced “No more baby parts!” (Why didn’t the Republicans demand that he be incarcerated at Guantanamo? Finally, it has destroyed Gnarly Carly Fiorina’s campaign, pathetic as it was. She claimed that she witness an abortion just like the vid described. But when that falsehood wouldn’t fly, she admitted she had witnessed a miscarriage that involved a fetus that was viable? And she has continued mouthing the filth about PP in spite of conclusive evidence the vids were fakes. And all of this was to be her stance as the Repugnant answer to Hillary, a woman who broke the glass ceiling along time ago. But her breakage was the result of an incompetence that got her summarily fired–with a 17 million dollar severance. I doubt we’ll hear much from her. She lacks the “sparkle” of a Sarah Palin as well as the latter’s gibberish.

  2. Yep, and Judge Napalitano goes on about how perfect the judicial system is and that the decision of the Judge should never be challenged. Unless, of course, the “originalist” Napalitano decides he doesn’t like the outcome. Then, the Judge is a tool of a corrupt evil lefty Muslim federal government and the judge must be impeached immediately. Same old, same old. Hypocrisy is what makes the FoxPod world go round — always and forever.

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