Pimpin' Ain't Easy For ACORN Pimp James O'Keefe!

James O'Keefe (left), Hannah Giles (right) and Andrew Breitbart (center). A federal judge ruled that they could be legally sued for taping former ACORN workers in their sting videos. Andrew Breitbart died in 2012. 

In 2009, two conservative activists go into a low income housing and voting rights organization. These two dressed up as a prostitute and a pimp. The went "undercover" to expose this organization for voter fraud.

As they filmed the organization staff, they got "advice" from workers telling them how to get public assistance and how to register "Mickey Mouse" for the 2010 U.S. Midterm Elections. This young activist and his then girlfriend had went forth with their evidence of shady activity to one of the country's most hostile conservative agitator and the network responsible for the rise of the Tea Party Movement. This agitator was railing against the "establishment media" and their shielding of President Barack Obama.

Many Republicans believe this organization "stole" the election for Barack Obama. The Republicans vowed and succeeded in getting this organization shut down.

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now shut down in 2010, putting hundreds of workers out of jobs. The result of the the videos, which were recorded secretly by conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe (the "young couple"), were released on Fox News and the late Andrew Breitbart's website BigGovernment.com from September into November 2009.

They quickly generated widespread, negative publicity for ACORN, a non-profit organization involved in voter registration, community organizing and advocacy for low- and moderate-income people for nearly 40 years. O'Keefe explained in September 2009 that he "targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives".

Hannah Giles reputation was ruined after the ACORN videos.

The U.S. Census Bureau and the IRS ended contracts with the organization, and the U.S. Congress voted to suspend its funding to ACORN. Soon ACORN also lost most of its private funding, despite several independent investigations that by December 2009 began to reveal no criminal activity by ACORN staff had taken place. ACORN filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on November 2, 2010, effectively closing the organization.

The videos seriously tarnished Hannah Giles. She refused to participate in any other activist activities with James O'Keefe after the ACORN incident.

James O'Keefe is currently on probation for a federal crime. He tried to infiltrate the offices of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) over her participation in the deciding vote for the American Healthcare Reform law.

While on probation, James O'Keefe asked a federal judge to grant him permission to continue his "journalism" without causing a scene. That was granted. So off he goes!

James O'Keefe wanted to continue the same formula he did with ACORN. Alas, most of his schemes seem to backfire. The media hasn't covered the latest bombshells from James O'Keefe and his fellow conservative agitators Lila Rose and Jason Mattera. They seem more interested in facts over edited footage.

Since Andrew Breitbart's passing, his organization has struggled to stay relevant. His crack team of serial agitators have rolled out the Harvard tapes of Barack Obama. He was embracing Derrick Bell, a tenured professor who was campaigning against the discrimination of women and people of color in the Harvard Review. The Breitbart team thought they had a "smoking gun!" Nope, just another banana peel that's rotten.

In order to keep the movement going, they kept James O'Keefe and Lila Rose running across the country with their cameras looking to tear into an organization that supports progressive causes. Planned Parenthood, CNN, NPR, and even billionaire George Soros were targets of a James O'Keefe sting. Unfortuantely, those couldn't match the formula of ACORN.

James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles portrayed themselves as a pimp and prostitute who were looking for a way to get public assistance for underage prostitutes. 

Now that the ACORN sting tapes are long and gone. Some former workers are vowing revenge.

According to the New Civil Rights Movement, a federal judge has just refused to throw out a request from James O’Keefe, who infamously and secretly filmed an ACORN worker while pretending to be a pimp. The selectively-edited video, emblematic of O’Keefe’s ugly brand of journalism, ultimately led to the unfunding of ACORN by Congress and its subsequent bankruptcy.

“Juan Carlos Vera sued O’Keefe and his associate Hanna Giles in Federal Court on privacy claims, after O’Keefe secretly filmed Vera at an ACORN office in National City in 2009,” Courthouse News  reported:

The now-famous series of ACORN recordings featured O’Keefe posing as pimp, dressed in a chinchilla coat, while Giles was disguised as a prostitute.

“The edited video depicted plaintiff as conspiring to promote an underage prostitution business by agreeing to help defendants file fraudulent tax forms and smuggle underage girls from Mexico,” U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz wrote in his order denying defendants’ request for summary judgment.

Vera, who said he contacted police shortly after the activists’ peculiar visit, sued them in the summer of 2010.

O’Keefe sought summary judgment, claiming that Vera had no expectation of privacy when the conversation was taped.

But Judge Lorenz found a “genuine dispute as to whether plaintiff’s [Vera's] expectation of privacy was reasonable.”

“ACORN is in the business of providing counseling and support for the community on various matters,” Lorenz wrote. “By its very nature, the organization handles personal matters with individual clients.

Defendants walked into ACORN and asked for plaintiff’s help with tax forms. … Specifically, they solicited his help with setting up an illegal prostitution business with underaged girls. … Plaintiff, as a worker for an organization like ACORN, reasonably believed that the content of the conversation was sensitive enough that it would remain private.”

O’Keefe duped Vera by asking if the conversation would remain confidential, before he launched into details of the nonexistent scheme, Lorenz wrote.

Over the course of a 40-minute conversation, Lorenz noted, the three “abruptly paused their conversation” after Vera’s supervisor, David Lagstein, entered the office, and continued talking after the supervisor left.

“Based on the surrounding circumstances, plaintiff reasonably believed that the conversation was private because it was held in his office with no one else present, and he believed that no one else was listening in on his conversation,” Lorenz wrote.

Because of this “genuine dispute,” Lorenz denied O’Keefe’s motion for summary judgment.

One of the controversial video from Project Veritas, a conservative activist group founded by James O'Keefe and Lila Rose.