Former ACORN Employee Sues O'Keefe and Giles

By Susie Madrak
CrooksandLiars

While O'Keefe may have walked away from his recent criminal charges with a slap on the hand, it's going to be more difficult to weasel his way out of these lawsuits:

A former ACORN employee in San Diego who lost his job after being filmed giving advice to "ACORN pimp" James O'Keefe is suing the amateur videographer and his partner, Hannah Giles, San Diego CityBeat's Dave Maass reported Friday.

Juan Carlos Vera was one of a number of ACORN employees who in the summer of 2009 was secretly filmed giving advice to O'Keefe and Giles, who told media they were posing as a pimp and prostitute with plans to bring underage prostitutes to the US from Latin America.

In a lawsuit (PDF) filed in a California court this week, Vera argues O'Keefe and Giles broke the law when they taped their conversation inside the ACORN office. California is one of about a dozen states where conversations can only be recorded if all parties to it agree. Vera is seeking $75,000, plus unspecified "special damages."California Attorney General Jerry Brown cleared Vera of wrongdoing in a report earlier this year. Brown found that, though Vera appeared sympathetic to the "pimp and prostitute" during the taped meeting, he immediately notified the police of the conversation.

Brown's investigation also found that the O'Keefe videos were "significantly edited."The shocking prospect of ACORN employees aiding in human trafficking prompted Congress to de-fund the group last year, a move that was later ruled unconstitutional. And a report from the Government Accountability Office, released earlier this year, found no evidence of wrongdoingon the part of ACORN, which received some $40 million in federal funding from 2005 to 2009.

(More here.)