Inside the Planned Parenthood attack on CMP

The abortion empire is striking back against David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). Monday’s indictment of Daleiden and colleague Sandra Merritt on charges of tampering with government documents and attempting to buy human tissue adds to the allegations against CMP that Planned Parenthood piled on in a federal lawsuit filed Jan. 14.

Six months to the day after CMP released the first of nearly a dozen videos showing Planned Parenthood executives and abortionists discussing fetal-tissue trade and possibly illegal abortion procedures, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and all seven of its California affiliates filed a claim in California’s Northern District Court against CMP, Daleiden, CMP board member Troy Newman, and other defendants. The suit accuses them of racketeering, fronting fake companies, procuring phony California drivers’ licenses, and engaging in illegal recordings of private conversations to “demonize Planned Parenthood” and “interrupt its operations.”

In Section 32 of the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood asserts one defendant set up a phony Facebook page with “likes” for Hillary Clinton and The Rachel Maddow Show.

The more serious accusations include violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and a federal eavesdropping statute that forbids intercepting oral communications at a place of business for the purpose of affecting its commerce. Planned Parenthood claims the surreptitiously recorded videos were part of a “smear campaign” that cost affiliates “millions of dollars.” The lawsuit also alleges wire fraud, invasion of privacy, and trespassing.

California law requires all parties to give their consent to be recorded, but excludes conversations in circumstances where participants can reasonably expect to be overheard, like a public gathering. Some of the CMP videos were taken at an April 2014 National Abortion Federation (NAF) conference in San Francisco during a lecture attended by dozens of people, including at least one Planned Parenthood employee. But the lawsuit maintains NAF requires all attendees to sign non-disclosure agreements that prohibit audio and sound recordings.

Additionally, Daleiden might have used some form of false identification to gain entry to the NAF conference. He then “parlayed the professional relationships forged” at the NAF conference and produced a fake ID to attend an October 2014 Planned Parenthood forum on family planning in Miami and a Planned Parenthood medical directors conference a few months later in Orlando, Fla., according to the lawsuit.

The invasion of privacy accusations center on recorded conversations between Daleiden, posing as a tissue buyer, and Planned Parenthood executives. The infamous salad discussion, in which Daleiden and Planned Parenthood abortionist and senior director of medical services Deborah Nucatola discussed tissue procurement over lunch, took place, according to the lawsuit, “in a private booth” at a Southern California restaurant. The subject of the conversation included Planned Parenthood’s “internal and proprietary” communications, which Nucatola assumed to be confidential.

In February 2015, a few weeks before the Orlando conference, Daleiden and another defendant met with Mary Gatter, the medical director of one of Planned Parenthood’s California affiliates, at a Pasadena restaurant. In the video, Gatter appears to be haggling over the price of “intact tissue.” But Planned Parenthood alleges Gatter’s seating “at the back of the restaurant” and “discreet” manner of conversation indicate she intended “the meeting to be a strictly confidential communication.”

In the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood also claims CMP violated certain IRS conditions for holding tax-exempt status and misrepresented its activities in its articles of incorporation filed in California.

Planned Parenthood is asking for as-yet-unspecified monetary damages incurred from loss of business and the cost of extra security measures allegedly necessary following a purported increase in threats to affiliates. The suit also asks for punitive damages and attorneys fees.

In its response, CMP called the lawsuit frivolous and “retaliation for CMP’s First Amendment investigative journalism.” CMP claims the point of the investigation was to expose Planned Parenthood to the legal system and the public as the “corrupt abortion and baby body parts profiteers that they really are.”

James Bopp, National Right to Life’s general counsel, testified Sept. 9, 2015, before the House Judiciary Committee that the CMP videos provide evidence suggesting Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue pricing scheme constitutes “a clear violation of the spirit and letter of [federal] law.” Bopp also pointed out that Planned Parenthood medical staff admitted to altering abortion procedures specifically to procure tissue, possibly in violation of federal law, but certainly breaking written promises to patients that their abortionists wouldn’t alter their procedures.

To date, no criminal charges have been filed against Planned Parenthood. In Section 9 of the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood notes state and federal agencies declined to investigate its affiliates in eight states and in 10 states cleared affiliates of wrongdoing.

But Texas is not among those 18 states. The inspector general of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission issued a letter Oct. 19, 2015, notifying Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast that Texas would cease its Medicaid payments to the Houston affiliate. The letter lists fraud and “numerous acts of misconduct” among the reasons for the decision, citing CMP’s undercover videos as some of the evidence. Three days later, Texas investigators raided several Planned Parenthood facilities.

In one of the CMP videos, the director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast seemed to indicate her organization aborted babies alive to obtain valuable “intact fetal cadavers.”

In a surprising turnabout Monday, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson announced a Houston grand jury had cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing. Instead, the grand jury indicted Daleiden with felony tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor count related to buying human organs. Although written charges have not yet been made public, Josh Schaeffer, a Houston attorney representing Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, said he believes the misdemeanor charge stems from an illegal offer to buy fetal tissue.

The charges sparked outrage among Daleiden’s supporters. Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee reacted to the grand jury’s decision, saying, “It’s a sick day in America when our government punishes those who expose evil with a cell phone—yet accommodates those who perform it with a scalpel.”