Charges reduced in Landrieu office phone caper

[sabra]

Source: AP

NEW ORLEANS — Federal prosecutors have filed reduced charges against conservative activist James O’Keefe and three others arrested after they allegedly tried to tamper with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office.

The filing Friday in U.S. District Court charges them with entering a federal building under false pretenses, a misdemeanor. They had been arrested Jan. 25 on felony charges.

The new charges are contained in a bill of information, which often signals a plea deal.

O’Keefe gained notoriety by masquerading as a pimp in a stunt that embarrassed the ACORN organization.

Read more: http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20100326/NEWS03/100326020

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Someone made a phonecall . . . . .

[Divine Discontent]

20. SOUNDS LIKE someone who might have made sure they weren't involved in the process got involved in

the process?

disgusting.

arrogant abuse of the justice system is wrong.


ON EDIT:

if this was a "democrat" in 2004, doing such a shocking crime as attempting to wiretap senator shelby's alabama office, his ass would have been locked up for years in a federal prison.... anyone here have even 1/100th of a percent of doubt in that statement??? anyone?

[katandmoon]

2. Shocker!!!! How long before the reduced charges are dropped?

[spotbird]

16. They accepted a plea

but now they will claim they were vindicated. Which they were.

There is no justice.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. I never saw it comiing.

I figured the judicial connection would never come into play. I'm shocked.

[zeemike]

28. I saw it comming....I predicted it from the first.

You can work the system if you know how....and those with money know how.

[Fumesucker]

4. Well, now *that's* a surprise..

:eyes:

[glinda]

5. It is a problem with all the conservatives Bush placed.

[Tempest]

6. And once again the media gets the ACORN story wrong

O’Keefe gained notoriety by masquerading as a pimp in a stunt that embarrassed the ACORN organization.

He did NOT masquerade as a pimp, he masqueraded as the boyfriend of the girl who was masquerading as a prostitute trying to get away from a pimp.

[alstephenson]

18. The "stunt" not only embarassed the ACORN organization.

It put the national ACORN organization into bankruptcy.

[mbperrin]

7. STOP THE PRESSES! BIG NEWS! WELL CONNECTED ASSHOLE

BEATS THE RAP!

Yeah, color me shocked.








Or not. Monday, it will all be dismissed, and he'll be eligible for a medal....

[TerribleLarryDingle]

8. In Realted news

Hannah Giles is a prostitute.

[Soylent Brice]

9. unreal.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

10. Reality: It's a fair disposition.

The problem is that others haven't been afforded the same consideration. That's the pisser.

[The Wielding Truth]

11. Here is the signed charge. A plea of guilty to lesser charge of misdemeanor.

http://media.nola.com/crime_impact/other/joseph%20basel%20et%20al%20boi.pdf

[FiveGoodMen]

12. I wonder if you could actually place bets on these things

We'd all know which way to bet but who would take the action?

What odds would Vegas give?

[tom_paine]

14. If you could find someone dumb enough to bet that proper investigation

would be done on Loyal Bushies caught in the act of something that could be embarassing to the Bushpublican Party, take that sucker's money!

This thing was a done deal five minutes after he got caught, like a 1960s KKK member being arrested for spying on "Northern Agitators".

[tom_paine]

13. A "plea barigain". What did the Loyal Bushie "prosecutors" get in exchange for the plea deal?

I mean, isn't that what a "plea bargain" is?

Oh, I bet they got something in exchange for the "plea bargain" all right! From their Bushie Masters to make sure "the case died right there" without further investigation.

[FiveGoodMen]

15. Speaking of which, when does Tom Delay's trial begin?

I heard he was indicted...

[tom_paine]

29. It works so very much like the KKK in the 60s

Except now the Feds are mostly ALSO "part of the Bushie Klan".

Bushification neutralizes the law enforcement and federal prosecution arms much the same way Nazification did in Germany and at local levels with the KKK in the Old Confederacy for 100 years.

Now, we are essentially back to that, except there are fewer and fewer unBushified Federal LE outlets an "uppity Liberal" can go to, if we want investigation or justice.

Very bad, and Obama doesn't even seem to be slowing it down much (after all, he already has said we can't 'look backward' and try to clean up the corruption of the Bushie Klan.

[Wizard777]

38. One of the prosecutors son will not become a convicted felon. That's what they got.

We should send in some black people to do the exact same thing. But they would get life. The felony only carries a maximum 10 year sentence. But they would get life. Like during Katrina when they wanted to send in the National guard to gun down the blacks looting because they were too stupid to get out of the way of a hurricane. Mean while they marvel at the intelligence of white survivalists out there "finding" things. :eyes: Uh huh.



:banghead:

[Wizard777]

17. There should be an investigation of this deal.

Maybe the DOJ just wants open season on Senate offices? At a time Democrats and their families are being threatened. Gas lines cut. This deal sends the wrong message. It's open season on Congress and it's no big deal.

[Divine Discontent]

21. 100000% agreed. This is grotesquely wrong! The guy was trying to wiretap a senator's office for

goodness sakes! How is that worthy of a plea bargain. They caught him red-handed.

[Wizard777]

36. Mary Landreau needs to corner Eric Holder. If she doesn't get satisfaction. Then Senate hearings.

[ro1942]

19. This is what you get,

Obama kept the Bush prosecutors. By the way they are prosecuting the kid in Utah that bid on federal land rights. Facing years in prison.

[Blue_Tires]

22. i predicted it from day one....

they were going to let it die down a little, then someone would make a call to the prosecutor, and the charges would eventually be whittled down to loitering or something...No one even tries a stunt THIS ballsy unless they are confident in the behind-the-scenes power backing them up if it goes wrong...

[bluedeminredstate]

23. Compare this

to the young man in Tennessee who accessed Sarah Palin's yahoo acct. by correctly guessing the security questions and resetting her password. He's going on trial for a felony that could land him in prison for a few years. That "crime" doesn't seem even close in seriousness. Not to mention the fact that Palin was using a public acct. for government business and was stupid emough to use public information to set her security function.

It sure looks like these twerps that tried to wiretap a U.S. Senator whose office is on federal property got some back channel deal. I can't imagine if this had happened in 2005 to a repug senator...

[Downwinder]

24. What does a Nun get for trespassing on Federal property? n/t

[Wizard777]

37. Six months in jail.

[defendandprotect]

25. They couldn't let this be investigated thoroughly, obviously . .. now branded a "caper" ...presume?

[tom_paine]

30. That's how you tell that the Bushie Klan has fixed the result, when Corporate M$M comes on line so

fast with the Bushiganda.

Within hours, EVERY SINGLE Corporate M$M outlet was saying "caper, caper, caper, caper".

That's a dead giveaway, same way you could probably tell the same thins in the 1970s Soviet Union by "reading between the lines" of their corrupt and controlled media.

As soon as "caper, caper, caper, caper" was blasting out everywhere, it was quite clear the Bushie Klan was taking care of it's own here.

[defendandprotect]

31. Agree -- and O'Keef was probably the thread that would expose a lot of other stuff...

[Downwinder]

26. Pandering to the teaparty. n/t

[alp227]

27. In his grave, Richard Nixon said: "lucky bastard"

And Sam Ervin, chair of the Senate Watergate Committee, is bawling in his grave.

What an insult to justice.

[Pab Sungenis]

32. Their plea should be accepted

IF they agree to drop a dime on Andrew Breitbart for putting them up to it.

[sabrina 1]

33. Imagine if a few Muslims decided to do the same thing,

So, does this mean that we can go to Republican Senators' offices and mess around with their phone systems?

There IS no justice, better to just accept it than to keep on hoping we'll ever see it applied to the Rightwing Mob.

[Divine Discontent]

39. sadly, seems that way. we have a DEM pres, DEM congress and 'weight' could be applied on these

types of crimes, I would think, to make sure he doesn't get off for wiretapping a senator's phone line...

seriously, if a Dem in 2004, a foreigner (Muslim!) did this, they'd get put in prison.

[Elmore Furth]

34. The NY Times admitted O'Keefe ACORN coverage wrong

The O'Keefe hoax videos of ACORN interactions are a classic example of right wing dirty tricks that continue to persist in the US with barely a peep of protest fromt he mainstream press.

http://www.alternet.org/media/146136/nyt_public_editor_finally_admits_acorn_'pimp'_hoax_reporting_failure:_'times_was_wrong'_

Donald Segretti, one of the original Watergate Gang, originated 'ratfucking' and this tradition has continued throughtout the conservative dirty trick galaxy for the next 50 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Segretti

The NY Times tepid and uninvestigated response to the ACORN hoax is disgraceful.

Here is what I found: O’Keefe almost certainly did not go into the Acorn offices in the outlandish costume — fur coat, goggle-like sunglasses, walking stick and broad-brimmed hat — in which he appeared at the beginning and end of most of his videos. It is easy to see why The Times and other news organizations got a different impression. At one point, as the videos were being released, O’Keefe wore the get-up on Fox News, and a host said he was “dressed exactly in the same outfit he wore to these Acorn offices.” He did not argue.

But Breitbart told me that, after doing his own examination, “I am under the impression that at no time was he ever dressed as an elaborate pimp” in the offices. Because O’Keefe was apparently carrying the hidden camera, he is generally not visible in the videos, but he is seen briefly entering the Baltimore office wearing a blue shirt and chinos.

Acorn’s supporters appear to hope that the whole story will fall apart over the issue of what O’Keefe wore: if that was wrong, everything else must be wrong. The record does not support them. If O’Keefe did not dress as a pimp, he clearly presented himself as one: a fellow trying to set up a woman — sometimes along with under-age girls — in a house where they would work as prostitutes. In Washington, he said the prostitution was to finance his future in politics. A worker for Acorn Housing, an allied group, warned him to stay away from the brothel lest someone “get wind that you got a house and that your girlfriend is over there running a house of women of the night. You will not have a career.”

The videos were heavily edited. The sequence of some conversations was changed. Some workers seemed concerned for Giles, one advising her to get legal help. In two cities, Acorn workers called the police. But the most damning words match the transcripts and the audio, and do not seem out of context. Harshbarger’s report to Acorn found no “pattern of illegal conduct” by its employees. But, he told me: “They said what they said. There’s no way to make this look good.”



The Acorn Sting Revisited

[dogfacedboy]

35. So, the little frat scum got Daddy to bail their conservotrash asses out, eh?

Must be that fear of being forced to wear lipstick in prison...