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Anti-ACORN Videographer Pleads Guilty In Senate Phone Tapping Case
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May 27, 2010 10:41 a.m. EST
Topics: government, politics, national government, crime, law and justice, prosecution, United States
Kris Alingod - AHN News Contributor
New Orleans, LA, United States (AHN) - James O'Keefe, the conservative activist who took undercover videos of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in a case in which he was initially accused of trying to tamper with the phone of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).
O'Keefe entered a plea agreement along with three co-defendants Wednesday. He was sentenced to three years' probation, 100 hours of community service and a fine $1,500. His associates, Joseph Basel, Stan Dai and Robert Flanagan, were each sentenced to two years' probation and 75 hours of community service and ordered to pay $1,500.
The four men were arrested in January and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses to commit a felony. Prosecutors said they illegally entered the New Orleans office of Landrieu to tamper with the phone lines, a crime that carries up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Those charges were downgraded in March to omit the intent to tap phones.
According to the original criminal complaint, Basel and Flanagan gained access to the office of the senator on Jan. 25 by posing as phone technicians. While the two made their way into the Hale Boggs building, O'Keefe waited inside the office to take footage of them using his cellphone.
The stunt took place amid contentious debate on the Obama administration's healthcare reform bill, which Congress passed in March without any Republican votes. Landrieu is a conservative Democrat.
O'Keefe, 25, is one of two conservative activists who took covert videos of ACORN employees last year. The footage appears to show employees giving advice on how to evade the law. It also prompted Congress to stop ACORN, the nation's largest advocacy group for low-income people before it shut down last month, from receiving more federal funds.
ACORN had enlisted former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to conduct an internal review, which found that the footage was "edited substantially" and that employees had not violated laws. Earlier this year, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes cleared the organization of wrongdoing, a conclusion that was blasted by conservatives as a whitewash.
But it was only when the full, unedited videos were obtained by California Attorney General Jerry Brown from O'Keefe last month in exchange for immunity that the truth was revealed.
The raw videos revealed that O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, were not dressed as a pimp and prostitute when they entered ACORN offices to ask about the trafficking of female minors. The unedited footage showed that O'Keefe had posed as a law student and wore a shirt and tie during his actual conversation with ACORN workers. Shots of him and Giles wearing their pimp and prostitute costumes were then inserted.
According to the attorney general, the raw footage was "heavily edited to feature only the worst or most inappropriate statements of the various ACORN employees," including one who "speaks limited English" and another who "played along" with the scam using outrageous claims that she had killed her ex-husband for beating her.
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