The Republican conspiracy to defund Planned Parenthood was dealt another defeat when a federal judge issued an injunction that barred anti-choice activists from releasing more edited videos.
Federal Judge William Orrick concluded that there was no evidence of criminal activity in any of the 504 hours of video.
The extension of the injunction was sought by the National Abortion Federation (NAF) against the Center for Medical Progress and its founder David Daleiden.
Judge Orrick wrote in his order:
In rare circumstances, freedom of speech must be balanced against and give way to the protection of other compelling Constitutional rights, such as the First Amendment’s right to freedom of association, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ protection of liberty interests, and the right to privacy. After fully considering the record before me, I conclude that NAF has made such a showing here…
Critical to my decision are that the defendants agreed to injunctive relief if they breached the agreements and that, after the release of defendants’ first set of Human Capital Project videos and related information in July 2015, there has been a documented, dramatic increase in the volume and extent of threats to and harassment of NAF and its members…
It should be said that the majority of the recordings lack much public interest, and despite the misleading contentions of defendants, there is little that is new in the remainder of the recordings. Weighed against that public interest are NAF’s and its members’ legitimate interests in their rights to privacy, security, and association by maintaining the confidentiality of their presentations and conversations at NAF Annual Meetings. The balance is strongly in NAF’s favor.
Republican lawmakers admitted that they saw the CMP videos before they were released and that Republican congressional staffers worked with CMP to promote the videos to create a scandal from nothing.
It has been a bad three weeks for the Republican plot to defund Planned Parenthood. In mid-January Planned Parenthood filed a civil lawsuit against the CMP and other co-conspirators that accused them of violating the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, wire fraud, mail fraud, and illegal secret recording. In Texas, an investigation into Planned Parenthood turned into a two-count criminal indictment against the creators of the edited videos.
The Planned Parenthood “scandal” that Republicans were hoping to use to get out their vote to swing the 2016 election has backfired. The people videos are prohibited from being released, Planned Parenthood has been found innocent of the allegations against them, and the people who created these bogus videos are facing criminal charges.
It turns out that the real scandal wasn’t the videos, but the Republican conspiracy to destroy Planned Parenthood.
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