California’s prosecution of the pro-life undercover journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in baby body parts was requested by Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a state agent testified Tuesday.
Brian Cardwell, a special agent of the California Department of Justice, said Lynch sent a letter to California Attorney General Kamala Harris asking that David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress be investigated, LifeSiteNews reported
At the criminal preliminary hearing Tuesday for Daleiden and Merritt, Cardwell affirmed he was present at the April 6, 2015, raid of Daleiden’s Orange County apartment.
The search warrant was authorized by Harris, now a U.S. senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.
Daleiden and Merritt are charged with 15 felony counts of illegal taping of confidential conversations in connection with the series of explosive undercover videos they released in 2015.
The videos captured Planned Parenthood executives and workers negotiating the prices of baby body parts and discussing how to maximize their profits by altering abortion methods to obtain better body parts.
Peter Breen, a lawyer representing Daleiden, told LifeSiteNews that he and his team have insisted “it was a political prosecution, but hearing that Loretta Lynch was the one that instigated it, that’s a huge, huge factor.”
Breen said the heads of Planned Parenthoods had a meeting with Kamala Harris in her office at about the time Harris was approving a search warrant Daleiden’s apartment.
“Something stinks here in San Francisco and it’s political and goes to the highest levels,” Breen said.
Cardwell testified “there was a letter sent by Loretta Lynch to Kamala Harris requesting an investigation.”
Brentwood Ferreira, lawyer for Daleiden, told LifeSiteNews he cross-examined Cardwell on the letter because the defense had not received a copy of it from the attorney general “so I thought he was mistaken.”
“As far as I’m concerned, Harris probably solicited the letter anyway to take heat off Planned Parenthood,” Ferreira told LifeSiteNews, “because Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation were the true engines of this prosecution.”
The lawyer asserted the criminal prosecution of Daleiden “is a complete violation of the First Amendment.”
Ferreira said Daleiden made his living as a journalist for the last 11 years and “has the right to have his work protected under the First Amendment and not have bogus eavesdropping charges filed by the Attorney General … at the behest of Planned Parenthood.”
