Houston prosecutors dropped all charges against Planned Parenthood whistleblower David Daleiden and his partner on Tuesday. Daleiden was the force behind a series of undercover videos that showed Planned Parenthood executives conspiring to traffic body parts harvested from aborted babies.
In what was seen by many as a blatant political witch hunt by pro-abortion activists, the Harris County district attorney’s office sought and received indictments against Daleiden for organ trafficking, a misdemeanor, and tampering with a government record, a felony. A Texas judge threw out the organ trafficking indictment last month. Houston prosecutors never sought organ trafficking charges against Planned Parenthood. The charge against Daleiden for using a fake I.D. was thrown out by prosecutors on Tuesday, according to the Houston Chronicle:
The Harris County District Attorney’s office on Tuesday dismissed all charges against anti-abortion activists who secretly videotaped Planned Parenthood officials in Houston.
David Robert Daleiden and Sandra Merritt were charged with tampering with a governmental record, for using a fake identification to gain access to the facility. In a surprise move before a hearing on the legitimacy of the indictment, prosecutors dismissed the charges.
Daleiden and his attorneys claimed victory for the anti-abortion movement, saying they were satisfied with the decision.
The investigation by the Harris County District Attorney was questionable from the beginning. Even though multiple Planned Parenthood executives are shown on tape conspiring to traffic human organs for profit, the prosecutors refused to seek any charges against Planned Parenthood for organ trafficking. Lauren Reeder, one of the prosecutors in the Harris County District Attorney’s office, was a member of the board of directors for a Texas Planned Parenthood affiliate targeted by Daleiden. Reeder’s LinkedIn page showed that she began serving as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood in 2009 and become a board member of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in 2013.
Harris County prosecutors also illegally shared evidence against Daleiden with Planned Parenthood, even though the Texas Attorney General’s office explicitly prohibited it:
The Attorney General ordered the DA not to share any evidence with Planned Parenthood, which they allegedly disobeyed.
In a sworn declaration, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast attorney Josh Schaffer admitted that Assistant DA Sunni Mitchell attempted to get around that AG’s directive in order to share raw video footage with the abortion provider.
“I was told that the Attorney General’s office agreed to give it to the Harris County District Attorney’s office on the condition that they not give it to Planned Parenthood. Mitchell told me that she would try to obtain the footage by other means,” Schaffer said.
The attorney for Planned Parenthood revealed this illegal flow of information in a statement that was included in the DA’s response to Daleiden’s motion alleging prosecutorial misconduct to quash the indictment against him.
Planned Parenthood’s own attorney admitted in sworn filings that the nation’s largest abortion provider actively colluded with Houston prosecutors during the bogus investigation of Daleiden.
Devon Anderson, who runs the Harris County District Attorney’s office, is no stranger to high-profile abortion cases. Anderson previously botched a case — many believe intentionally — against abortionist Douglas Karpen, often characterized as the Kermit Gosnell of Texas. Despite multiple eyewitness accounts that Karpen murdered newborn babies with his bare hands, Anderson failed to secure an indictment against him.
After the trumped-up charges against Daleiden were announced, over 130,000 people signed a petition demanding that all charges against Daleiden be dropped and that prosecutors bring charges against the Planned Parenthood abortionists who repeatedly conspired on camera to illegally traffic body parts ripped from unborn babies.
