Former San Diego ACORN worker, Juan Carlos Vera will receive $100,000 in a settlement from federal criminal and professional liar James O’Keefe, after being secretly video-taped in violation of California law by the Rightwing propagandist. The tape was just one in a series of similar videos, all deceptively edited as part of his 2009 ACORN “pimp” hoax series.
The story of the settlement to Vera’s July 2010 civil lawsuit was originally broken by Wonkette, which published the 3-page settlement document [PDF], yesterday.
Several different official investigations, including those by the former MA Attorney General [PDF], by the Kings County, NY District Attorney, and by the CA Attorney General all determined that there were no violations of law performed by any ACORN worker seen in the several surreptitiously taped videos. The officials found the tapes were “highly” and “deceptively” edited.
The ACORN “pimp” hoax videos were published originally by the late Republican con-man Andrew Breitbart who, before he died of heart failure just over one year ago, was likely to have been pulled in to the civil case as well, after O’Keefe disclosed in his deposition that Breitbart had advance knowledge of the scheme to secretly video tape workers in violation of CA’s Invasion of Privacy Act.
After Breitbart’s publication, the edited tapes were widely covered, without fact-checking, in both the Rightwing media such as Fox “News” and non-Rightwing media such as the New York Times. The Times was eventually forced to issue partial-corrections for their inaccurate reporting after a six month effort by The BRAD BLOG to point out how they’d been duped by O’Keefe, who had lied about appearing as a 70s era blaxploitation “pimp” in the offices of ACORN.
A 2010 investigation by the CA Attorney General determined there was “no criminality” by ACORN workers seen in any of the raw video tapes. O’Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles agreed to turn over the unedited tapes in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution in the state. “The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality,” California’s then AG Jerry Brown said in a statement accompanying the release of his office’s investigation which “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.”
“Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor,” he added.
While the deal left the AG’s office unable to prosecute the duo, the criminal investigation found that O’Keefe and Giles likely violated the civil provisions of CA’s Privacy Act and could be sued under those provisions “for recording a confidential conversation without consent.” Vera, who, after his odd meeting with O’Keefe and Giles had the wherewithal to contact the police, sued both of them in July of 2010 for violations of the act…
Giles had the common sense to settle with Vera last summer after a string of losses in court. [Update: The BRAD BLOG confirms she agreed to pay $50,000 to Vera in that settlement.] O’Keefe, on the other hand, attempted to argue a First Amendment privilege as a “journalist” to secretly video tape Vera. Judge M. James Lorenz soundly rejected the argument in May of 2011, but O’Keefe persisted in his unsuccessful defense.
O’Keefe now finally faces at least some accountability in the settlement, which, in addition to agreeing to pay $100,000 to the former ACORN employee, notes that he “regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family.”
Thousands of ACORN workers were left unemployed by the O’Keefe/Giles/Breitbart stunt after the U.S. Congress also fell for it. In 2009, shortly after the deceptively edited tapes were released, they passed legislation, signed by President Obama, that federally defunded the four-decade old community organization which had advocated to end predatory lending practices and helped millions of low- and middle-income Americans obtain housing loans and legally register to vote. The group was forced to shut its door in the wake of the manufactured scandal.
While O’Keefe, Giles and Breitbart helped perpetrate the long held GOP lie that ACORN was involved in voter fraud, there is not one piece of known evidence to demonstrate that even one illegal vote was ever cast thanks to an improper registration by any of the organization’s tens of thousands of voter registration workers.
The only question now: Will any of those other ACORN workers who were improperly fired due to O’Keefe’s illegal, secret video tapes file suit against him as well?
UPDATE 2:27pm PT: Conor Friedersdorf’s coverage of the Vera/O’Keefe settlement over at The Atlantic points out that, to this day, Breitbart’s fake “news” site, where the fake ACORN stories were originally published, still has the original inaccurate story sliming Vera — published as is, with no correction, even though it was long ago debunked as nonsense, and even since O’Keefe has agreed to apologize and pay him $100,000 in the settlement as described above.
Writes Friedersdorf:
They did not.
When last I wrote about this story in 2010, long after all the facts had come to light, there was no correction appended to the story. And look at the page today: The original story is still up with no correction, no clarification, no editor’s note — nothing.
The other stories in the ACORN series, similarly found to be nonsense, some of them almost immediately after publication, have also yet to be corrected. This one, for instance, made the case that an ACORN worker in San Bernardino had killed her husband. Yet, within hours of its publication, San Bernardino police had investigated and issued a statement including this important point: “From the initial investigation conducted, the claims do not appear to be factual. Investigators have been in contact with the involved party’s known former husbands, who are alive and well.”
Nonetheless, that original, if phony, story remains at the site, uncorrected even today, though the video itself is no longer embedded:
There were, however, quite literally, hundreds of stories posted about all of these phony videos on Breitbart’s sites. The fake ACORN exposé was the one that Breitbart used on the day he premiered his original “Big Government” site. It’s what launched him into the stratosphere of pretend Rightwing “journalists”. (“Big Journalism”, “Big Hollywood” and other “Big” sites quickly followed and all carried the ACORN videos and a great deal of commentary about them. They have all been folded into one place — breaking many links in the process — at Breitbart.com since then.) If Breitbart was to issue corrections, as a legitimate news sites would, they would have to issue literally hundreds, if not thousands of them across their site. That’s just one reason they will likely never do so.
For example, Hannah Giles’ October 28, 2009 story “LAMESTREAM MEDIA: WHY DID YOU BYPASS THESE JUICY ACORN NUGGETS?”, in which she describes the San Bernardino ACORN worker having “shot her husband” (more than a month after it was known that she did no such thing), and Juan Carlos Vera having “want[ed] to help smuggle girls across the Mexican border right after an ACORN-sponsored immigration parade”, which was also nonsense, as the settlements with Vera by both Giles and O’Keefe now attest, are still posted at the Breitbart site without correction or retraction.
That, of course, is because they have since moved on to publishing other phony stories, sliming other people, which they have similarly failed to correct or apologize for.
A troubling feature of the ACORN pimp hoax is that the mainstream media, like Los Angeles Times, continues to refer to this despicable con-man and convicted federal criminal as a “conservative activist.”
Indeed, even when it reported on the guilty plea O’Keefe entered in federal court relating to his attempt to tamper with the phone system in the New Orleans office of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), the ordinarily astute TPM referred to O’Keefe as a “conservative filmmaker.”
The real question that remains to be answered is who, amongst the right-wing billionaire backers of voter registration suppression, will provide the $100,000 — a rather paltry sum when measured against the immense damage wrought by the destruction of an innocent community organization, whose real crime, in the eyes of the billionaire class, could be found in the fact that it was a voice for the most vulnerable of our citizens — the poor and the middle class.
See, The Real Targets of the ACORN Smear Campaigns: Verifiable Truth, American Democracy.
The money shot:
Testing. Disregard.
It is also illuminating to know that O’Keefe and his handlers
Ernest is absolutely right. We don’t know enough about who funded O’Keefe and who will pay his court-ordered penalty. Will the paper of record, the New York Times take up the challenge of figuring that out? They can’t change the fact that they played a dishonorable role in the demise of ACORN, but they could work toward redemption by training their resources on these questions.
Lori Minnite
In future news:
James O’Keefe declares bankruptcy.
Can’t we make this lying behavior illegal, if you keep an incorrect story active on your site, you should be fined and subject to criminal penalties after it is shown incorrect.
Vera shoudl get much more than $100k if they still are sliming him on their website, he should get money for everyday incorrect story has been on their site.
It is just sad that a person like James O’Keefe has 100,000 dollars while real journalists are broke or going broke. Consider donating to the Brad Blog to support this type of reporting!!
Right side of website…
Or by Snail Mail
Make check out to…
Brad Friedman
7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Peace.
Lori Minnite
Hah! That despicable fascist rag cares nothing about honor and redemption. Why does anyone believe otherwise anymore?
Whether or not con-artist James O’Keefe pays for his own sins or gets funded by con-artists…
Doesn’t this elicit a response from the entire congress as to why they JUMPED to destroy ACORN?
The only thing that happened that fast in congress before is when they funded Viagra for guys who couldn’t get it up.
Hey there Illinois, Karen, I’m with you. It is damn past time we put some new laws on the books to undo raygun’s destruction of the Fairness Doctrine. Sue the hell out of known LIARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,
AND THEIR BACKERS.
Lets say for a percentage of total income, shell companies included.
I’m wondering why Jerry Brown would have cut a deal with an alleged lawbreaker in order to get the footage. Isn’t this what subpoenas are for?
The immunity deal O’Keefe and Giles got from the state can only be considered a sweetheart deal that smacks of favoritism.
After Brown’s office made their report, an April 2010 segment of the Rachel Maddow Show showed how Vera was taken out of context. She suggested to Congress and Fox viewers “you’ve been had”.
Vera’s lawsuit originally mentioned additional “John Doe” defendants. One was likely Breitbart, who was later compelled to release how much he was paying O’Keefe for the videos. Another may have been Sean Hannity who also aired the worst allegations about Vera after it was already known he had actually called police.
But watch what Breitbart’s authors all pitched in to do after Maddow’s report aired:
April 8: In “Maddow: O’Keefe Hid Important Facts About ACORN!!!!” author “Patterico” calls Maddow’s piece “pointless” oddly claiming O’Keefe never misled the public about being dressed in garish pimp garb, followed by crass comments calling Maddow “tuna breath” and “Ralph Macchio”.
April 9: In reply to Larry O’Connor’s “Maddow Leaves Truth On the Cutting Room Floor” one comment calls Maddow “a crazy man” while another says Maddow “blocks and tackles for ACORN when they’re caught red-handed in child sex trafficking of Latinas”.
April 11: Ben Shapiro’s attack piece “Rachel Maddow and Gov. Moonbeam Cover Up the Real ACORN Scandal” mocked Maddow for having a “husky baritone” voice and looking like various male actors.
April 19: Andrew Marcusin’s “Exposing Rachel Maddow As a Fraud In 16 Seconds Flat” paints Maddow a “soulless shill who makes excuses for an organization which repeatedly exhibited a willingness to commit federal crimes involving the sexual exploitation of immigrant children”.
All links here. After justice has been served, it’s interesting to see how many right wing propagandists were willing to double down on O’Keefe’s lies, to smear Vera, to smear Maddow and to ignore what were already the well known facts of the case – that O’Keefe broke the law and gor Vera fired using deceptive reporting.
The above links all here.
Republican Con-Artist O’Keefe is a seriously disturbed adolescent with a fixation upon pimps, prostitution and fantasy sex.
Anyone who wants to believe he’s an investigative “journalist” is disturbed as well.
Yeah, what’s wrong with our national media that they don’t fact check and get the story right from the time they start “investigating.” Can it really be they are so fucking bias toward they’re pay check that the truth lays there dying on all our floor? Nay, that can’t happen right here in america can it? 🙁
The little sleazebag will probably find some way to avoid paying what he owes. Republican’ts aren’t very good when it comes to assuming responsibility for their misdeeds.
Doesn’t this elicit a response from the entire congress as to why they JUMPED to destroy ACORN? Larry Bergan
My guess is that the scandal was created to give Congress cover to defund ACORN…it had to be done quickly before the ‘evidence’ was revealed to be fake.
Don’t underestimate the considerable talent of Vera’s lawyer, Gene Iredale. Way to go Gene!
Dictynns:
I believe you’re right about that. It’s alarming that the Democrats didn’t stop the race to defund ACORN. ACORN was one of the big reasons they won the presidency in 2008.
They are going to remain silent now that it’s proven in court that the video was fake.
Like all conservatives this guy is a 10 striker.
1. Thou shall not steal. Right up thru 10 from their magic bible that allegdly keeps them in line.
These guys with terrorist mafia tactics exactly opposite of the bible.i
Maybe they should put this man in black face for 24 hours in Alabama with some real Umericuns to then if he makes through the day you are even James.