The California Department of Justice, led by state Attorney General Kamala Harris, raided the home of the man behind the series of undercover Planned Parenthood videos Tuesday. Harris is investigating David Daleiden, whose Center for Medical Progress videos exposed Planned Parenthood’s macabre fetal tissue harvesting activities last year.
Via CBS Sacramento:
Agents seized all video footage from his apartment, along with his personal information, David Daleiden said in a Facebook post. Daleiden, the founder of a group called the Center for Medical Progress, said agents left behind documents that he contends implicate Planned Parenthood in illegal behavior related to the handling of fetal tissue.
A spokeswoman for Harris wouldn’t comment on the “ongoing investigation,” but Harris said last July that “she planned to review the undercover videos to see if the center violated any state charity registration or reporting requirements.”
She said that could include whether Daleiden and a colleague impersonated representatives of a fake biomedical company or filmed the videos without Planned Parenthood’s consent.
Daleiden, who faces related charges in Texas, has insisted all along that his group followed the law in making the videos.
Harris, a Democrat, was on President Obama’s short list of candidates to replace former attorney general Eric Holder when he stepped down from office. She was also on his short list to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Now she is running for the U.S. Senate and is openly campaigning as a defender of Planned Parenthood.
Harris has accepted campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood and is now using the group to help raise money for her campaign.
On her Harris for Senate web page is the following in red type and capital letters: “ADD YOUR NAME TO DEFEND PLANNED PARENTHOOD.”
It adds: “We need you to take a stand and join Kamala in defending Planned Parenthood.”
Lila Rose, the president and founder of Live Action, said, “Harris can’t even pretend to be objective in this case.”
Meanwhile, CMP said in a statement, “Instead of investigating them, Planned Parenthood bought-and-paid-for Attorney General Kamala Harris is hosting petitions for them on her Senate campaign website.”
“We won’t back down or be intimidated by government corruption,” the group said.
A pro-life group, Students for Life, called for Harris’ resignation in a statement today:
California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who sent agents to raid the home [of] a citizen journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s practices of harvesting and selling the body parts of aborted babies, is using her Senate campaign website to advocate for the abortion giant, promoting a petition to defend Planned Parenthood. Ms. Harris is engaging in exceptionally corrupt behavior, using her office as AG to aide [sic] a staunch supporter of her campaign. This is exactly the kind of puppeteering and blatant of conflict of interest that the American public is sick and tired of. Ms. Harris should immediately resign her position as the California Attorney General.
Harris is known in California as a “hyperpartisan who routinely opposes the public policy positions of conservative organizations on significant issues.”
As the state’s top charity regulator, she decided to unilaterally bypass federal law regarding how she obtains Schedule B charitable donor information from the IRS. Instead of doing it on a case-by-case basis if she has a legitimate reason, she’s been “employing a dragnet method, demanding that all charities registering with her office submit their Schedule B donor lists to the Registry in order to solicit contributions from Californians.”
That led to the publication of the names of roughly 1,400 donors to nonprofit groups on a California government website, despite Harris’ assurances that such information would remain confidential.
Investigative journalist James O’Keefe blasted Harris with a strongly worded statement accusing her of “retaliation” and confirming that Project Veritas is “conducting an ongoing investigation of malfeasance in her office.”
Here’s my statement regarding the seizure of @daviddaleiden‘s property by @KamalaHarris: #tcot #PlannedParenthood pic.twitter.com/XZx8rV5fDW
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) April 6, 2016
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