You might have thought that the indictment of the creator of a series of undercover videos smearing Planned Parenthood might have been a setback to Planned Parenthood’s opponents. Instead, as Brian pointed out on Wednesday, anti-choice activists have simply moved on from lying about the content of the videos to lying about the circumstances of the indictment.
A case in point was the interview that Lila Rose, the founder of Live Action and a mentor of indicted activist David Daleiden, gave to conservative radio host Eric Metaxas yesterday, in which she falsely claimed that a prosecutor who serves on a local Planned Parenthood board had refused to recuse herself from the investigation into the videos and that the charges against Daleiden actually demonstrate Planned Parenthood’s guilt.
A grand jury in Houston that had been convened to investigate Daleiden’s accusation that Planned Parenthood was illegally selling fetal tissue for profit at the behest of state’s anti-choice lieutenant governor found no wrongdoing on Planned Parenthood’s part, but instead issued indictments of Daleiden and a colleague for tampering with a government document and for attempting to buy fetal tissue, although without success.
Daleiden’s supporters have latched on to the fact that one of the 300 prosecutors serving in the Houston office that conducted the investigation is a board member of the local Planned Parenthood affiliate. However, as Brian wrote, that prosecutor, who works in the office’s family law division, disclosed her Planned Parenthood connection from the beginning of the case and had nothing to do with the investigation:
When the Houston case started in August, the attorney who serves on a local Planned Parenthood board disclosed the connection herself and the district attorney announced that she would “not be involved in any manner in this investigation.” At the time, one Texas Republican lawmaker praised the decision to “insulate that person from any involvement with the ongoing investigation.”
Rose told Metaxas, however, that the indictment was a case of “judicial activism and tyranny” and that the Planned-Parenthood connected prosecutor “did not recuse herself” from the investigation.
“So would you think that there’s political motivation behind this or just simple bias?” Metaxas asked.
“Well, I think that bias becomes political motivation becomes judicial activism and tyranny becomes extremely overstepping, absurd actions by sometimes the people in power,” Rose responded. “And that might be what we’re looking at here, especially because that prosecutor who was a board member for Planned Parenthood in that office in Harris County did not recuse herself, and that is extremely problematic. And I think that this case is going to blow up, and not in a good way for the folks that are bringing the indictment charges against these two brave activists.”
Rose also repeated the myth that the charge against Daleiden for attempting to buy fetal tissue proves that Planned Parenthood was selling it. Daleiden, she said, was “charged with the same crime, part of the same crime, that Planned Parenthood was totally let off the hook for, which is they were charged with trying to buy baby body parts but Planned Parenthood, who’s actually selling them, was completely let off the hook for selling them, for trying to sell them.”
In reality, the charge against Daleiden reportedly stems from an email he sent to Houston Planned Parenthood officials “offering to buy fetal tissue for $1,600 per sample.” Planned Parenthood never responded.
