ACORN Report Finds No Illegal Conduct (videos substantially edited & involved voiceovers)

[kpete]

Source: Talking Points Memo

TPMMuckraker
ACORN Report Finds No Illegal Conduct
Zachary Roth | December 7, 2009, 1:51PM
................

On the key question of potential illegal conduct, it finds:

While some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers.

Harshbarger also notes that the videos were sometimes less than perfect representations of the events they depict. He writes:

The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

[tabatha]

1. Cheating again.

They can only score points by lying, cheating and doing anything but tell the truth.

[hobbit709]

2. Are we surprised?

[FBaggins]

19. Not with EITHER side

You could tell all of this from the videos as they were released. There appeared to be some voice-over, but there was clearly loads of cuts.

OTOH... it isn't like anyone should be surprised at ACORN's "investigation". if they DID do everything they were accused of you would STILL expect this. This is, after all, the same group that (IIRC) hired their own investigators on a previous scandal... and then fired them when they didn't like what the investigation showed.

I could have written this press release the day after they reported hiring an investigator (BOTh for what they would find and how they would respond).

[SpiralHawk]

3. Oh, it was just more Republicon propaganda mindf*ck

from their Ministry of "Truth"

What a plague upon decent & honorable human beings the republicon propaganda pimps are...

[No Elephants]

4. This will not surprise anyone. Even the Republicans knew it was bs, but they don't care about bs

(or they wouldn't watch Fox). They are willing to make claims like ACORN is evil and Mark Foley is a Democrat because they know truth seldom gets the attention of the original lie.


For example, I'm betting this thread will not get half the posts the original thread did (in part bc the Republicans who post here are less likely to post on this thread).

Voter registration, good. Doctoring videos, bad.

So, will Congress restore funding?

[Orsino]

15. It won't surprise anyone, becuase no one will listen.

ACORN has already been branded, about eight hundred news cycles ago.

[Enthusiast]

20. And that was the intention

all along. Their aim was to cripple ACORN and they got it done.

[bullwinkle428]

5. I'm sure Fox News will be trumpeting these findings all day long!!

:sarcasm:

[Ready4Change]

13. (crickets chirping)

.

[niceypoo]

14. This idiot is held up as some sort of idiot/pundit by FOX news

[Blue_Tires]

28. +1

[napi21]

6. I realize ACORN doesn't have any $$/, but could they get

a gro of po-bono attys to sue those bt's for slander and defamation? If those action aren't punished theyWILL be repeated!

[Bjorn Against]

22. Most lawyers would not charge unless a settlement was won...

I don't think ACORN will have any problem finding a really good lawyer to take this on, it is a clear case of defamation and they could likely win a big settlement.

[earcandle]

7. And who will pay for all of the tax dollars it took to sort this out? Who will be prosecuted for

lies and wasted reputations? There needs to be consequences to
dupes.  (idiotically transparent dirty tricks) 

[Techn0Girl]

8. Actually they DID find illegal conduct ...

they just did not find an overall PATERN of illegal conduct - which is not the same thing at all as NO illegal conduct.

I'm a personal fan of Acorn but I will not put on blinders to any malfeasance that may have occurred.

[TommyO]

9. Actually, they didn't

This hidden camera controversy is an apt example. While some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers.

[ConnorMarc]

10. Thank YOU!!

I wonder how much, if any, attention will be given to this important news story by the so-called "Librul MSM."

I never bought into the hoopla of this story as anything other than a foolish stunt and joke, the minute I saw that jackass dressed up as a pimp and that girl with him dressed as a Techno-listening hooker I knew it was nonsense.

I don't understand how RWers fall for this foolishness time and time again.

[sabrina 1]

25. Actually there was no illegal content. The only illegalities

in this whole stunt were perpetrated by O'Keefe and Giles when they broke the laws of two states by taping individuals without telling them they were being taped.

If you watch the tapes, which apparently many people did not, but just watched the clips selected by Fox, it's obvious they were edited. In the tape featuring Juan Carlos Vera eg, even with all the editing they did, they could not make him seem to be 'helping' them at all with what they claimed to be doing. The opposite happens, he tells them he is in touch with law enforcement, THEY tell him 'that is bad'. He thought they wanted to help the young girls to escape, not to become prostitutes and even on their heavily edited tape, that is clear.

Add to that, they lied when they said that no one had thrown them out or called the police. The facts are that the Philadelphia office DID throw them out AND filed a police report on them. And Juan Carlos Vera in the San Diego office emailed his cousin who is in law-enforcement, AND called the police to report them.

On a second tape, the ACORN worker actually fooled them. She knew they were fakes. She told them she had murdered her husband, showing them that anyone can tell a phony story as she knew they were doing. But, stupid and prejudiced as they are, they believed her. Karl Rove believed her also and they ran with that to show how 'ACORN is hiring murderers'. It was hilarious really if the MSM had actually reported some facts about all this. But what none of them did was to call the police, not Hannity, Rove or Giles or O'Keefe making themselves guilty of exactly what they tried to blame ACORN for.

I'm hoping that California and MD will prosecute them. And I hope all their video is subpoenaed so that they are completely exposed for the liars and fools that they are.

GO ACORN! I think these little rightwingnut thugs took on the wrong people. I can't wait for the discovery phase of ACORN's lawsuit against them.

[Canuckistanian]

35. What was illegal? What charges can be brought?

The investigation showed NO illegal conduct. Learn to read.

[mikelgb]

11. Meanwhile "dems" jumped all over the fuck acorn bandwagon.

fucking flimsy idiots

[never cry wolf]

12. Keep in mind, ACORN commissioned this study

I do not disagree with it's findings, however for the MSM to say gotcha on the goopers, this won't do it. We need an independent investigation either by a law enforcement agency or congress.

[Cid_B]

16. Correct...

In an amazing turn of events.. the guy we hired to tell us we did nothing wrong submitted his report today saying that we did nothing wrong! Huzzah!

Would you approve of a report that AIG sponsored that showed everything is A-ok?

[Luminous Animal]

23. Congress won't investigate ACORN because our congresscritters

will end up looking like boobs. But, ACORN is suing Congress and perhaps discovery will vindicate them.

[FBaggins]

24. They may be vindicated on some of the "sting" issues...but discovery is a bad thing

I think opening Acorn to discovery was a big part of what these two were after in the first place. Even if Acorn were "clean" (and we already know they have problems), you don't want finances/donors/internal memos/email/etc to be released.

[Luminous Animal]

26. Even Congress cannot go on a fishing expedition.

[FBaggins]

30. They can...but won't while we conrol Congress...but it doesn't matter

Because Congress isn't the one who is being sued. It's the pimp and his girl who have access to discovery. They can't just get anythin... but fishing expedition is very possible.

[FBaggins]

31. They can...but won't while we control Congress.

Because Congress isn't the one who is being sued. It's the pimp and his girl who have access to discovery. They can't just get anythin... but fishing expedition is very possible.

[Luminous Animal]

32. Congress is precisely who ACORN is suing.

[FBaggins]

34. The only case that involves "discovery" of this sort

is not the one against Congress. It's the Breitbart (etc) suit that leaves them open to discovery.

Congress can look at just about anything they want without a lawsuit.

[spanone]

17. yet all the lies and bullshit about acorn will resonate with the palinites

the media/repukes....they are the problem

[FourScore]

18. I'm shocked...SHOCKED...and to think it got aired on Fox News!!! n/t

[Bjorn Against]

21. I hope that ACORN sues the hell out of these people

I will be pissed if the media does not give this the same amount of coverage as they gave the original videos, a lot of people have a lot of explaining to do.

[sabrina 1]

29. I don't think the media will cover anything that is favorable

to ACORN. As soon as it began to become clear that those videos were rigged, the media dropped the story. They should have exposed those deceivers and they had the information to do so. But for some reason they chose not to. They went with the story, without doing even a basic investigation into what actually happened, showing thosse videos without any questions being asked. But as soon as questions were raised, and Giles and O'Keefe refused to talk to them, that was the end of the media coverage.

ACORN is suing Giles and O'Keefe and Congress. They should also sue the media who put those ridiculous videos on the air and didn't do even a basic investigation before doing so. If it had not been for the bloggers, everyone would still believe they had credibility.

[Llewlladdwr]

36. Are you really sure...

you want the media trumpeting the news that ACORN has 'cleared' themselves? I mean, that doesn't look suspicious at all...

[Bjorn Against]

37. ACORN hired an independent investigator, organizations do that all the time.

I would agree that sometimes organizations do hire independent investigators that have no intention of getting to the bottom of the matter, but if they can show that parts of the tape were redubbed however it doesn't matter who did the investigation. When they can show evidence that this whole sting operation was a giant fraud the media should report on it, after all you can't expect an "investigation" by a couple of right wing hacks dressed like a pimp and a prostitute that refuse to release the unedited tapes of their interviews to be more credible than this.

[mzmolly]

27. Gosh, who'da thunk it?

:sarcasm:

[drm604]

33. Well duh!

This was obvious to anyone who looked at those videos objectively.