After Planned Parenthood was cleared by a Texas grand jury of any wrongdoing and the two creators of the edited Planned Parenthood videos were indicted on criminal charges, Select Panel Ranking Member Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) condemned House Republicans who are still using the videos as the basis of a Select Panel to Take Away Women’s Liberty.
“I’m pleased by the Texas grand jury’s decision to clear Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing and indict their anti-abortion accusers instead,” Rep. Schakowsky said in a statement. “Sadly, and fueled by heavily-edited videos created by anti-abortion activists who are now under grand jury indictment, House Republicans continue to ignore the facts and waste taxpayer funds on a partisan political attack on women’s health. Their investigation needlessly endangers the privacy and safety of patients, healthcare providers, and scientists seeking cures that will help all Americans.”
Schakowsky charged, “House Republicans should admit when they’re wrong. Their relentless and baseless efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and their select investigative panel must stop.”
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Of course, House Republicans aren’t going to let a little thing like criminal charges stop them. It didn’t stop them before and they got away unscathed. Republicans are becoming experts at using the conservative media to generate, by any means possible – sometimes illegally- heavily edited videos they can use in their Grand Show Theater known as House hearings.
Back in September of 2015 Leader Nancy Pelosi called for an investigation into the group that funded these videos. It’s time.
The thing is, this isn’t a one-off, and so far Republicans have gotten away with this- leaving punishment to the little people:
A conservative activist who made undercover videos of the liberal community-organizing group ACORN was one of four men charged Tuesday with attempting to illegally access and manipulate the phone system in a district office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
Joseph Basel, 24; Robert Flanagan, 24; James O’Keefe, 25; and Stan Dai, 24, were charged with entering Landrieu’s New Orleans office under “false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony,” according to a news release from the local U.S. attorney’s office. The office is federal property.
When a the poor sap conservative activists got busted for breaking into a Democratic Senator’s office, the Republicans just moved on to the next sucker. And there are apparently a lot of angry, paranoid, willing suckers suffering from a raging case of Republican persecution complex.
Who is prompting and funding these illegal activities that are then conveniently used by members of the House of Representatives to defund “liberal” groups they disagree with- groups that register poor people to vote, god forbid, and give poor women access to healthcare.
As I wrote from the beginning of this debacle:
(T)his entire debacle has all of the signs of a set up that was organized with knowledge of some elected Republicans, who have admitted to seeing the videos before they were “out”. It has the appearance of a conspiracy involving elected officials, to use deceptively edited videos in an election year to create a false flag issue.
At least two Republican lawmakers saw the video long before they released it. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus and chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee “investigating” the video, admitted he had seen the clip weeks before the public saw it and when questioned about why he and House Republicans waited so long, he tried to get the Roll Call reporter to agree that the interview never happened and told the reporter that he should not be quoted.
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) had also seen the video about a month before the Republicans gave a press conference about the videos, playing shocked and concerned.
The videos were then conveniently rolled out as “OMG we have to investigate, look what we stumbled upon!”, but there are reasons to question this story. And these reasons should be investigated.
There are suggestions of a conspiracy among some House Republicans regarding these deceptively edited Planned Parenthood videos. A federal criminal investigation should be launched to determine just how much involvement House Republicans had in these videos. When did they know about them and why. Did any of them make suggestions about what would be “helpful” to have? Did they communicate with anyone involved in these videos?
This is one fake video too far, and the fact that a discredited video is still being used in a show attempt to defund Planned Parenthood for the sole purpose of political ads for Republicans, all funded by the taxpayers, suggests that the truth was never the goal.
It’s time for a federal criminal investigation into House Republicans regarding the deceptive Planned Parenthood videos. It’s time for the Justice Department to get involved.
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