California is Withholding Evidence That Would Exonerate David Daleiden for Exposing Planned Parenthood

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Feb 21, 2022   |   10:52AM   |   Sacramento, California

The fight to vindicate undercover journalist David Daleiden continued Friday when his lawyers accused California of trying to suppress a district attorney’s testimony about his investigation into the sales of aborted baby body parts.

Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, investigators with the Center for Medical Progress, are facing criminal charges in California for allegedly using fake identifications and making illegal recordings of pro-abortion groups without their consent.

On Friday, their lawyers filed a motion accusing the California Attorney General’s Office of trying to suppress testimony from former Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas that supports the pro-life journalists’ case.

“The State of California is criminalizing investigative journalism, and attempting to suppress evidence that would exculpate Mr. Daleiden from these groundless charges,” Daleiden’s attorneys Steve Cooley and Sianna Collado said in a statement.

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Rackauckas conducted his own criminal investigation of Planned Parenthood and two businesses that handled aborted baby body parts after Daleiden’s investigation came out. In his testimony, Rackauckas said he found evidence of infanticide, partial-born abortion and battery committed against abortion patients as well as illegal sales of aborted baby body parts, and the two businesses later closed and paid a $7.8 million fine.

“Daleiden’s filing points out that the applicable California law creates an exception for recordings intended to show the commission of violent crimes, and that the Rackauckas declaration and testimony should be exculpatory to the charges against Daleiden,” his lawyers said.

Here’s more from Townhall:

… according to the filing, the California attorney general rejects the notion that Daleiden’s reporting provided evidence of crimes and instead claimed the pro-life activist is an “agent provocateur who sought only to damage Planned Parenthood.”

Daleiden’s attorneys said in the filing that Rackauckas’ testimony would be “extremely relevant” to their client’s “credibility and character concerning his search for violent crimes.”

“In addition, there is probably no greater expert on what constitutes evidence of all crimes than the five-term district attorney of Orange County, Tony Rackauckas,” the filing reads.

While the California Attorney General’s Office is seeking to suppress Rackauckas’s testimony, it also is asking to include irrelevant evidence of “anti-abortion violence at clinics and meetings,” Daleiden’s lawyers said.

“This request is actually an attempt to put Mr. Daleiden and Ms. Merritt on trial for threats and violence perpetrated by other people,” their motion states.

The criminal case against Daleiden and Merritt began with two top Biden administration leaders, Vice President Kamala Harris and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, both of whom worked as the attorney general of California before taking on their current positions.

California law requires that both parties consent to be recorded. Becerra alleged that Daleiden and Merritt broke the law by filming their conversations with abortionists and others without their consent.

However, Thomas Brejcha, founder and president of the Thomas More Society, which represents Daleiden, said undercover journalists and whistle-blowers have been celebrated for similar work, writing: “… about the time that Daleiden published his findings, animal rights activists were praised for documenting abuse in the poultry industry. Unlike in Daleiden’s case, Harris launched probes of the poultry industry and didn’t charge the reporters.”

He said Daleiden used standard undercover journalist techniques in his investigation.

Even legal scholars, news outlets and others that support abortion have slammed the California Attorney General’s Office for prosecuting Daleiden and Merritt. Brejcha said law professors Sherry F. Colb and Michael C. Dorf criticized the state for pursuing criminal charges against Daleiden because the case could “cripple investigative journalism” as a whole.

“Whatever the precise facts of this case prove to be, the prosecution has broader implications, and not just for abortion and anti-abortion speech,” they wrote in an column for CNN. “Undercover exposés play a vital role in informing the American public of important facts that would otherwise remain hidden.”

The Los Angeles Times editorial board also slammed the California Attorney General’s Office for threatening citizen journalists and jeopardizing the freedom of the press.

In 2019, Daleiden, Merritt and the Center for Medical Progress also lost a civil case to the Planned Parenthood abortion chain. Their lawyers are appealing.

Donations to Daleiden’s legal defense may be made to the Thomas More Society. Click here to donate.

Daleiden’s undercover investigation shocked the world with its expose of Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts harvesting practices. It led to numerous state and federal investigations. U.S. Senate and House committee investigations both concluded with referrals to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.

The Center for Medical Progress undercover videos damaged Planned Parenthood’s reputation when they revealed the abortion giant’s baby body parts operation. Not only did the investigation raise concerns about potentially illegal sales of human body parts, but it also uncovered evidence of abortionists allegedly putting women’s lives at greater risk by altering abortion procedures to better harvest aborted baby parts. The investigators also found evidence of alleged patient privacy violations.

However, Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation repeatedly have denied all allegations of wrong-doing, and many news outlets now parrot their claim that the undercover videos were deceptively edited or debunked. An independent forensics investigation verified that the videos were authentic.

Some undercover videos show how Planned Parenthood employees callously and flippantly negotiated the price of tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers and brains. Other evidence indicates the abortion giant may have broken HIPAA patient privacy laws.

The expose videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all 14:

  • In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
  • In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
  • In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
  • In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
  • In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
  • In the sixth videoHolly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
  • In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
  • In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
  • The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
  • The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies. The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
  • The 11th video: catches a Texas Planned Parenthood abortionist planning to sell the intact heads of aborted babies for research. Amna Dermish is caught on tape describing an illegal partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term unborn babies which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.
  • The 12th video in the series shows new footage of Jennefer Russo, medical director at Planned Parenthood in Orange County, California, describing to undercover investigators how her abortion business tries to harvest intact aborted babies’ bodies for a local for-profit biotech company and changes the abortion procedure to do so.
  • The 13th video: exposes a Planned Parenthood medical director admitting that babies born alive after abortion are sometimes killed.
  • The 14th video: catches Planned Parenthood executives discussing gruesome abortion procedures and the sale of body parts from aborted babies for profit.