Charging that former California Attorney General Kamala Harris, now Democrat Joe Biden’s pick as vice presidential hopeful in the 2020 presidential campaign, launched a criminal case because that’s what Planned Parenthood “financiers” who supported her wanted, the legal counsel for Sandra Merritt has appealed the criminal charges pending against her.
Merritt was one of the undercover investigators who recorded statements from Planned Parenthood and other abortionists and released videos back in 2015 revealing abortionists’ trade in the body parts of unborn babies.
She’s represented by Liberty Counsel, while David Daleiden, the other defendant in the case Harris launched, has separate counsel. They both worked with the Center for Medical Progress to do the videos, which resulted in recommendations from Congress for investigations and charges if appropriate.
Liberty Counsel said on Thursday it has filed an appeal with the Court of Appeal of the State of California asking that the eight remaining counts – others were dismissed earlier – be thrown out.
“The bogus criminal investigation and heavy-handed tactics began under then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris (now senator and VP candidate) and then her replacement, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who filed 15 charges for Merritt’s undercover journalism work in exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in baby body parts,” her lawyers reported.
The lawyers noted Becerra at one point stood with a sign stating, “I Stand with Planned Parenthood.”
The lawyers explained, “Becerra has not shown, and cannot show, probable cause for any of the politically motivated charges. Merritt’s appeal details with evidence that she did not intend to violate any laws but used legal undercover techniques to investigate and expose potential fetal-trafficking abuses and crimes being committed by Planned Parenthood.”
Liberty Counsel’s Vice President of Legal Affairs Horatio Mihet said, “This political prosecution against Sandra Merritt has gone on long enough. It is time for the legal inquisition, that began with Kamala Harris at the behest of her Planned Parenthood financiers, to meet its demise. We will not rest until Sandra Merritt is vindicated.”
The appeal describes the roughshod “investigation” launched by Harris when she was in office in California. It’s been continued by Becerra, her successor.
“Among numerous documented deficiencies, their investigator, who had never investigated any previous cases of illegal recording, admitted that he never asked the alleged recording ‘victims’ any questions to probe their manufactured stories. He simply wrote down and accepted what they told him at face value. For most of the so-called ‘victims,’ he had to inform them that they were alleged ‘victims,’ since the videos depicting them had not yet been published. They had no idea that they were ‘victims’ until the attorney general’s investigator called to tell them and recruit them for this prosecution,” the lawyers explained.
“Merritt’s appeal also examines the testimony of those alleged “victims” in court, each of which admitted under oath that their conversations with Merritt could be overheard by others in the public spaces where they were recorded, and they took no steps to prevent others from overhearing their candid discussion of what Planned Parenthood does behind closed doors. Under California law, conversations that ‘may be overheard’ are, by definition, not ‘confidential,’ and can be recorded without consent.”
The filing points out the counts, over recording “private” conversations, lack any showing of a specific intent to violate the law, that some of the charges were based on “hearsay,” that even the “recorded persons” admitted the conversations were in the public, and more.
As a result of the undercover work, “two fetal tissue profiteering companies in California were successfully prosecuted, forced to pay almost $8 million in penalties, and shuttered permanently,” the filing explains.
Yet the California AG has gone “a different course.”
“Rather than joining other law enforcement agencies to prosecute the persons and organizations caught by defendants on tape to be engaging in egregious abuses and violations of law, the attorney general has chosen to bring this prosecution … the first prosecution of its kind in California and the nation.”
Mat Staver, general counsel of Liberty Counsel, told WND when Biden picked Harris that she was “directly responsible for the persecution and prosecution of David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt.”
“She is the one who initiated the criminal investigation,” he said.
And it was Harris who dispatched law enforcement officers to Daleiden’s home to confiscate the undercover videos.
Harris also used an affidavit against the journalists from a person who claimed the videos were illegally recorded secretly in locations where “there was an expectation of privacy.”
However, many of the videos were recorded in restaurants with passers-by, and at least one was taken in an elevator where members of the public were able to listen to the conversation, he said.
He said Harris, and successor Xavier Becerra, have pursued an ideological agenda using the resources of the state of California.
He pointed out that never before have undercover journalists been charged for their investigations, which are protected by the First Amendment.
Here are two of the videos released by CMP:
See a CMP video about Planned Parenthood skirting federal law:
