California A.G. Says ACORN Workers Didn’t Violate Law in ‘Pimp’ Tapes

Posted on Apr 2, 2010

Wikimedia Commons / Phil Konstantin

Jerry Brown found fault with right-wing activists’ approach to getting and editing the video, which can now be viewed on the attorney general’s site.

After reviewing the infamous video footage taken of right-wing activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles purportedly posing as pimp and prostitute, respectively, and talking to employees of the now-disbanded organization ACORN, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has concluded that “the evidence does not show that the ACORN employees in California violated state criminal laws in connection with their conversations” with O’Keefe and Giles. What’s more, Brown’s office has posted the activists’ unedited video from California on the attorney general’s website.  —KA

The Brad Blog:

Brown’s statement in the announcement is highly critical of Rightwing activists James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute and her law school boyfriend in the videos posted on Rightwing media mogul Andrew Breitbart’s “Big Government” website last year and played extensively on Fox News, as well as other non-partisan media outlets.

“The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality,” says Brown in the statement. “Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor.”

His report notes that the office’s “investigation has involved attorneys from all three legal divisions – Criminal Law, Public Rights, and Civil Law – as well as Special Agents from the Department’s Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence” and included a review of “the unedited recordings made by O’Keefe and Giles.”

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