
Latest public explanation for alleged crime quickly shredded...
By Brad Friedman on 1/30/2010, 10:19pm PT  













Breitbart's recent Twittered attempts at spinning wingnut gold out of his employee's federally felonious straw comes in conjunction with his release on Friday of O'Keefe's first full statement since Monday's arrest along with three others Republican dirty trickster co-conspirators --- one, the son of Lousiana's acting U.S. Attorney William J. Flanagan --- during the alleged attempt to illegally interfere with the phones of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA).

As posted on Crazy Andy's BigGovernment.com site Friday, O'Keefe's statement explains that his arrest according to an FBI affidavit, for having "aided and abetted ... in the execution of the plan" to manipulate the Democratic Senator's phone system after gaining access to it "by falsely and fraudulently representing that the [sic] were employees of a telephone company," was all just one great patriotic "investigation", O'Keefe informs us, for which, now that he's been arrested, he's learned he "could have used a different approach".

His thin explanation for the incident --- absurd on its face, but well promoted by Breitbart, naturally --- hangs on the notion that the Repub tricksters weren't trying to bug Landrieu's office, they were just there to "ask the staff if their phones were working" after some complained in December they were unable to get through to the office during the health care vote, when busy signals were the rule of the day.

It's unclear why they'd need a scheme at all --- which included dressing up as phone company employees, "manipulating" the phone the at the reception desk, seeking access to the main phone closet, and keeping one man outside in the car with a listening device --- to simply "ask the staff if their phones were working", but reasonable explanations aren't really required for this bunch of con-men, or the one who employs at least one of them.

Neither does O'Keefe explain in his statement what he had hoped to discover regarding Landrieu's phone system at the end of January, in regard to apparent complaints that some had trouble reaching her office in Mid-December.

His lame explanation for it all --- both before and after blaming the MSM for his own troubles, rather than taking personal responsibility for it, as an actual conservative might have done --- hangs in this attempted sleight-of-hand from his statement:

When asked about ["constituents...having trouble getting through to her office"] Senator Landrieu's explanation was that, "Our lines have been jammed for weeks." I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for "weeks" because her phones were broken.

Uh, yeah. But Landrieu's representative never actually said "her phones were broken". The representative said they were "jammed for weeks". So O'Keefe's explanation is a complete FAIL in that regard, for a start, not that the tea baggers who've come to idolize Breitbart and O'Keefe, or the "liberal MSM" (who do so as well) will bother to notice.

There is much more that can be taken apart in O'Keefe/Breitbart's statement --- for example the hypocrisy of calling for the release of the video tapes he made during the incident, even while both he and Breitbart still refuse to release the full and unedited ACORN tapes months after that scam was pulled --- and I had hoped to do so over the weekend. But happily, Marcy Wheeler over at emptywheel beat me to it today.

Her analysis utterly destroys O'Keefe's ridiculously desperate excuse for violating federal law. It's short, sweet, and a must read, so please do so!

Breitbart has still failed to offer an explanation as to how it is that he should be let off the hook for what his employees do (he now enjoys Twittering that O'Keefe, who he's admitted he has on salary, isn't actually an employee, or some such falderal) and that O'Keefe is "innocent until proven guilty" (twittered disingenuously by Crazy Andy here, here, here and here) even while extending no such benefit of the doubt to anybody employed by ACORN, naturally.

ACORN, of course, deserves no such benefit of the doubt because, after all, they have the temerity to actually help millions of low and middle-income Americans legally participate in their own democracy, and other such GOP crimes.

J. Garrison Jordan, the attorney for Robert Flanagan --- the accused perp who is also the son of the acting U.S. Attorney in Louisiana --- downplayed all of it on Friday as little more than a youthful prank, telling the AP "You're dealing with kids." [Update 3/29/10: The link to AP's story at the NPR website now shows up as "File Not Found" for some reason. Here's another link to the same story.]

A "kid", of course, whose father is an acting U.S. Attorney. And another "kid" who is, apparently well-connected and/or wealthy enough to afford a Superstar Republican Attorney. O'Keefe, who is 25 years old (the others are 24) has now lawyered up with Superstar Republican Watergate Attorney, Michael Madigan. Ironically, Madigan served as the attorney to Republican Howard Baker who famously asked, as the ranking member of the Senate committee investigating Watergate: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

But, ya know, we're just "dealing with kids" here, right? Nothing to see. Move along. ACORN may be plotting right now to steal another election after all!!!

O'Keefe's statement follows in full below, but don't bother looking for Wheeler's devastating analysis of it over at Breitbart's site as he's apparently too cowardly to share it with the very readers he's conned into believing they are receiving "fair and balanced" coverage of "news" and stuff.

Pimps like Andy, whether they're wearing the threads are not, turn lots of tricks --- and make lots of dirty money in the bargain.

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The "Statement from James O'Keefe" follows in full below. Marcy Wheeler's analysis shredding it, is here...






...And again, here's Marcy Wheeler's response to the above at emptywheel...

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UPDATE 2/1/10: Our 7 questions for Andy, as AP investigates...