The other shoe may have dropped in the Planned Parenthood fetal tissue video saga. Late Monday afternoon, a grand jury in Harris County, Texas–which includes Houston and most of its suburbs–found no criminal wrongdoing on the part of a Planned Parenthood affiliate. Instead, it indicted two of the masterminds behind those videos.
District attorney Devon Anderson announced that the grand jury had returned a two-count indictment charging Center for Medical Progress founder and director David Daleiden with tampering with a governmental record and illegally buying or selling human organs. One of his colleagues, Sandra Merritt, was indicted for tampering with a governmental record. Under Texas law, tampering with a governmental record is a felony that carries a minimum of two years in prison, while illegally buying or selling human organs is a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in prison.
Today’s announcement probably comes as a cold douche to Texas lieutenant governor and Houston resident Dan Patrick. He asked Anderson, who like him is a Republican, to investigate Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast after a CMP video recorded there came to light. Patrick denounced what he described as Planned Parenthood’s “gruesome and barbaric work” and believed it merited a criminal investigation.
To her credit, Anderson didn’t turn this investigation into a witch hunt. Instead, as she said in a statement, “we must go where the evidence leads us.” Apparently said evidence led the grand jury to clear Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast of wrongdoing–and find that the people who were supposedly uncovering crimes at Planned Parenthood committed crimes themselves.
Anderson didn’t go into specifics on the charges. We can, however, make a guess as to what some of them are from a lawsuit Planned Parenthood filed against the CMP on January 15–in which Daleiden and Merritt are co-defendants. Among other things, Planned Parenthood contends that CMP operatives obtained fake government IDs so they could access private areas of Planned Parenthood clinics. The fact that Daleiden was charged with buying or selling human organs suggests that that the grand jury believed Daleiden went beyond trying to rook Planned Parenthood employees into admitting they were selling tissue, and actually offered to buy tissue himself.
Not surprisingly, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast is beating its chest and yelling to the heavens. Spokeswoman Rochelle Tafolla said that the indictments prove what her organization has been saying all along–that Daleiden and the CMP “broke the law and committed fraud.”
The CMP issued the following statement:
Never mind that those videos have been exposed as heavily manipulated and unreliable.
Despite this indictment, both Governor Greg Abbott and state attorney general Ken Paxton have vowed the state’s investigation into Planned Parenthood will continue. Maybe it’s just me, but if Abbott and Paxton keep their word, their investigation will be just another taxpayer-funded witch hunt. After all, a grand jury convened by a Republican district attorney in a county that is a hotbed for anti-abortion activism found that it was the CMP who broke the law, and not Planned Parenthood.
Moreover, three separate congressional committees, as well as several states, have cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing. Abbott has already made himself and his state look foolish by proposing a series of constitutional amendments that would effectively destroy our system of government if they ever became law. Now he’s poised to continue a criminal investigation when two of the people who were responsible for the investigation in the first place are now facing criminal charges.
This should also be a warning to the U. S. House panel that is investigating Planned Parenthood. As if there already wasn’t enough evidence that this panel, led by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, is embarking on a witch hunt, now the people whose videos triggered the investigation have been exposed as criminals themselves. If Abbott, Paxton, and Blackburn have anything in them, today’s announcement should be a cue to end these witch hunts and end them now.
