California official unfairly targets citizen journalists

Mona Charen

We are witnesses to an abuse of power by government that represents a test of our democracy. Anyone who fails to rally to the cause of the Americans victimized in this case should be discredited.

Though I have not been shy about criticizing President Donald Trump when I think he deserves it, he is not involved.

I refer to the Kafkaesque malfeasance by Xavier Becerra, attorney general of California. Becerra, for many years a Democratic congressman, is using his office to hound two citizen journalists. They came into his sights because their videos exposed the sickening reality behind the euphemistic surface of Planned Parenthood. Becerra and other abortion-rights absolutists found this embarrassing. Why do I call it Kafkaesque? Because David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who went undercover to reveal the law-breaking of Planned Parenthood, now find themselves accused of 15 felony counts by the state of California.

Their crimes? Recording people without their consent. The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, to its credit, has called this a “disturbing overreach.” And Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, while condemning Daleiden’s politics, has defended his rights, saying, “This was a legitimate investigation, and no level of government should be in the business of chilling it.”

Xavier Becerra is no stickler about secret recordings. In 2012, he relished the release of Mitt Romney’s surreptitiously recorded comments to donors in which Romney mentioned the “47 percent.” Romney had joked that if he were Hispanic, he’d win the election.

Could there have been a political motive? Consider that the prosecution began under Becerra’s predecessor, Kamala Harris, whose website urged Californians to “support Planned Parenthood” and who was not above sending police to raid not just Daleiden’s office but also his home, in search of video footage.

Let’s review. When the Daleiden videos were first released in 2015, they were so damning that Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards felt the need to release a video apologizing for the “tone and statements” of a Planned Parenthood executive. That was Dr. Deborah Nucatola, who said this about the techniques she uses to preserve body parts for donation (and sale): “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.”

Daleiden’s group recorded dozens of hours of video at several abortion clinics. It’s a disgrace that no prosecutor followed up with charges against Planned Parenthood based on the evidence Daleiden obtained.

And it is a scandal that most of what Daleiden documented is legal.

That’s why Planned Parenthood has circulated the false story that the videos were “deceptively edited.” Alexandra DeSanctis debunked that fiction.

The lying is a civic hygiene problem. But what is happening to David Daleiden goes beyond that. This is a political vendetta and thus a malicious prosecution. Yes, California law forbids recording a person without his consent. But there are exceptions, as the Los Angeles Times editorial noted, in cases of public interest. Thus, ABC News, among others, has done covert investigations of various entities without risking retaliation from the attorney general. Animal welfare activists who have gone undercover to reveal the mistreatment of chickens have not been prosecuted. But then, baby chicks are defenseless.