San Francisco Chronicle, April 2, 2010:
California Attorney General Jerry Brown said Thursday that he will not prosecute the community organizing group ACORN or conservative filmmakers who posed as a pimp and prostitute while secretly videotaping conversations at Southern California offices of the group last year.
Brown granted conservative filmmakers James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles immunity in exchange for their full, unedited videotapes of their encounters with the group's staff, during which they sought advice on how to smuggle Mexican girls across the border as prostitutes.
The evidence does not show that employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now violated state criminal laws in connection with their conversations with O'Keefe and Giles, the report concluded.
That's yet another report that has reviewed the evidence accusing ACORN of criminal activity, and found the charges to be completely bogus. Three months ago, the Congressional Research Service found that there were "no instances of individuals who were allegedly registered to vote improperly by ACORN or its employees," and that "No instances were identified in which ACORN 'violated the terms of federal funding in the last five years.'" Former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger reached the same conclusion after conducting an independent investigation of ACORN himself.
To be sure, Brown did say that employees at San Diego's ACORN office exhibited "terrible judgment" by throwing away 500 pages of confidential records into the trash -- but added that these employees did not engage in prosecutable crimes in California. It's also worth noting that the San Francisco Chronicle story is perpetuating the meme that James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles "posed as a pimp and prostitute" during their encounters with ACORN employees, even though that claim has been proven false.
But here's the larger issue: Despite the fact that ACORN has now been cleared of criminal wrongdoing after multiple investigations have held the evidence up to scrutiny, that doesn't change the sad reality that ACORN is now a defunct organization which was targeted mercilessly and unfairly by Fox News and major media outlets which perpetuated baseless right-wing smears against it. Such innuendo without the support of any criminal investigation didn't stop Congress from voting to strip ACORN of its federal funding last September -- a decision which a federal judge declared to be an unconstitutional bill of attainder in December. Brown's report only further cements the injustice perpetrated against ACORN, and how powerful interests conspired to ruin the organization and tarnish it as criminal despite all evidence to the contrary.
digby adds this:
This whole episode makes me sick. It was drenched in racist stereotypes from conception and the reaction from the media and the politicians revealed more about this country than those tapes revealed about ACORN.
Couldn't have said it any better.