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We will deliver this letter with thousands of signatures to Attorney General Eric Holder :
Gregg Bernstein
Office of the State's Attorney for Baltimore City
208 Mitchell Courthouse
110 North Calvert Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21202
Re: Request For Prosecution Of James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and
Andrew Breitbart For Violating Maryland's Privacy Statute
Dear State's Attorney Bernstein:
I am writing to urge you to prosecute Andrew Breitbart, James O'Keefe and Hannah
Giles for conspiring to and violating Maryland's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act.
In the summer of 2009, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, while working for Andrew Breitbart, visited
the Baltimore office of ACORN and surreptitiously recorded a private conversation with two ACORN
staffers, Shera Williams and Tonja Thompson. They edited those recordings and posted them on the
Internet causing harm to the employees and ACORN.
Maryland Law, Annotated Code of Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article 10-402, requires
two-party consent for audio recordings. The recordings of the ACORN employees were not done in a
public area but rather in an area of the ACORN offices where there was an expectation of privacy.
The facts of this case provide a prima facie showing that both Giles and O'Keefe violated the statute
and indeed they have freely admitted to secretly recording their conversations with the ACORN staffers.
They did this with the clear intent to harm these staffers and ACORN, and therefore, criminal
prosecution is clearly appropriate.
Under Maryland's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, it is unlawful to tape record a
conversation without the permission of all the parties. See Bodoy v. North Arundel Hosp., 945
F.Supp. 890 (D. Md. 1996). Additionally, recording with criminal or tortuous purpose is illegal,
regardless of consent. Disclosing the contents of intercepted communications with reason to know
they were obtained unlawfully is a crime as well. Violations of the law are felonies punishable
by imprisonment for not more than five years and a fine of not more than $10,000.
I also call upon your office to bring the conspiracy charges against Andrew Breitbart for paying
and directing O'Keefe and Giles and then directly carrying out the distribution of the illegally
obtained tapes, also a felony under applicable Maryland law. Mr. Breitbart is the director of
BigGovernment.com, an Internet website that pushes far right propaganda, and he has used the
illegally recorded ACORN tapes to harm ACORN and to raise funds for his operations.
The case for criminal prosecution has been made stronger by the recent release of four official
reports on the criminal conduct of these three individuals with regard to ACORN, which I have
linked below. The House Judiciary Committee, the former Connecticut Attorney General, the California
Attorney General and the General Accounting Office prepared these reports. Also, it appears that
Mr. O'Keefe is engaged in a nationwide crime spree as evidenced by his illegal conduct at other
ACORN offices, his recent arrest in Louisiana for his illegal entry into Senator Mary Landrieu's
Senate Office in order tamper with her telephone system, and by his recent attempt to set up a
CNN reporter and illegally tape record her conversations on a boat in Maryland.
Each of the official reports above paints a damning picture of O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart,
who intentionally invaded the privacy of ACORN staffers nationwide, taping their conversations
and then editing them to falsely create the appearance of illegality and impropriety by ACORN/staffers.
Each of these reports makes clear that neither ACORN nor its staffers committed crimes but that
O'Keefe, Giles and conspirator Breitbart did. In fact, the California Attorney General granted
O'Keefe and Giles immunity in exchange for the unedited copy of their illegal tape, which showed
that the tape was intentionally edited to portray a harmful picture of ACORN.
Justice cries out for holding O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart accountable for their illegal conduct
taping ACORN employees without their knowledge or consent. ACORN, a well established organization
that worked with poor and minority citizens, was literally destroyed by the actions of O'Keefe
et al after they used intentionally edited video to falsely portray ACORN as engaging in criminal
activity. ACORN suffered opprobrium, bankruptcy, lost federal and foundation funding, endured
federal and state investigations, and as a result had to close down its operations assisting the
most vulnerable citizens in America, the poor, homeless and disenfranchised.
Maryland's privacy statutes have been used to prosecute people for one party taping without any
criminal intent. In the case of O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart, they engaged in their conduct with
the intent to cause harm, and they did cause that harm. This case demonstrates the most egregious
abuse of the statute-surreptitious recording, editing footage to create a false appearance of criminality,
posting of that false footage on the Internet, using that false footage to demand the destruction of ACORN,
and defaming ACORN and its employees based on that false, surreptitious footage. They had a tortuous
purpose - to destroy the business of ACORN -- and they succeeded by illegally recording conversations
in violation of Maryland law, a law enacted to protect against this very conduct.
Thus it's up to you to ensure that justice is served in this case by taking immediate legal action
against James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart, all of whom clearly violated Maryland law.
Sincerely yours,
CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL REPORT
"The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them
through highly selective editing of reality, Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting
room floor." -Attorney General Jerry Brown
April 1, 2010, Attorney General of California -- News Release
http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1888&
The California AG's Report echoed the findings of the Brooklyn D.A.'s office, which described them
as a "heavily edited splice job" http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/acorn_set_up_by_vidiots_da_x16IroTf4AsXCI19nttFLL
Report of the Attorney General on the Activities of ACORN in California
April 1, 2010
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n1888_acorn_report.pdf
CA AG Report -- Attachments
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n1888_acorn_attachments.pdf
Link to unedited ACORN video provided by O'Keefe:
http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/multimedia/index.php
MASSACHUSETTES ATTORNEY GENERAL REPORT
www.proskauer.com/files/uploads/report2.pdf
GAO INVESTIGATION
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-648R
PDF OF REPORT http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10648r.pdf
JUDICIARY COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION
judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/CRS-ACORN091222.pdf
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