The conservative activist filmmaker stood in federal court in New Orleans and pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering federal property under false pretenses. The 25 year old who made national headlines with his ACORN undercover video expose, was sentenced to serve 3 years probation, 100 hours of community service, and pay a $1,500 fine.<\/p>\n
The case came after he was arrested at the New Orleans offices of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. O’Keefe, along with three co-defendants, said their goal was to show that the Senator’s office phones were working, claiming there were complaints that people could not get through to register their opinions about the then pending Obama administration health care plan.<\/p>\n
Two of the suspects were dressed as telephone repairmen, while O’Keefe taped them handling the phones in the reception area. In court, it was revealed that they also had a hidden camera in a construction helmet, and asked for the telephone junction box.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors at first charged O’Keefe and the others with entering the offices “for the purpose of committing a felony,” and that they tried to “manipulate” and “maliciously interfere” with the phone system.\u00a0 But in court, U.S. Attorney Jordan Ginsburg said that prosecutors “did not uncover evidence they attempted to commit a felony.”<\/p>\n
When the story broke, some media reports claimed O’Keefe and the others were attempting to “wiretap” the Senator’s phones, but the defense always denied that. In a Fox News interview, O’Keefe branded the media wiretapping reports as “outrageous. .all we were there to do was ask questions, make statements and film their reactions. A politician or a representative is probably not willing to be honest about wrong doing with a self identified journalist.\u00a0 So what I do is I go undercover. I\u00a0 propose scenarios in order to get people to be honest with me, to\u00a0 have a frank discussion, nothing more than that. That’s what I do in all my videos, it’s what I did in the ACORN video. I\u00a0 make statements, I ask questions, and film reactions, that’s it.”<\/p>\n
In court, O’Keefe said that he took full responsibility for the operation, and admitted that he “never considered the security concerns of a federal building.” He also said he did not “intend to misrepresent myself to any law enforcement officials.”<\/p>\n
Federal Magistrate Daniel Knowles II told the defendants that they could be a “tremendous asset to our society,” but that he and the others had to learn that they had gone too far.<\/p>\n
At one point Knowles asked co-defendant Robert Flanagan, “How could you have done something so stupid?”\u00a0 Flanagan replied: “Poor judgment, sir.”<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval, in papers filed with a motion, expressed concern about the implications on the security of federal buildings, calling what O’Keefe and the others did,
\n“extremely serious,” nothing that the “deception” they used was “unconscionable.”<\/p>\n
Having gone through the legal process, O\u2019Keefe says he has a new video project in the works that he told Fox News he is releasing Thursday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The conservative activist filmmaker stood in federal court in New Orleans and pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering federal property under false pretenses. The 25 year old who made national headlines with his ACORN undercover video expose, was sentenced to serve 3 years probation, 100 hours of community service, and pay a $1,500 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}