Topic category:  Government/Politics

Will the United States and California Attorney Generals focus on the ugly truth recently revealed about ACORN and/or "Climategate" or the way that it came to be revealed?

Considering the treatment of three United States Navy Seals who captured a notorious terrorist based on the uncorroborated claim of the terrorist that one of them punched him in the stomach, messengers bearing bad news about ACORN beware!

You see, the powers that be don't like to be embarrassed, especially publicly.

"Shooting" a messenger definitely doesn't resolve the problem presented in a messenger's message, but it can provide a perverse satisfaction to the "shooter" as well as punish the messenger "shot" and intimidates others from delivering bad news messages.

California ACORN favorites and "political animals" Jerry Brown, Attorney General, former Governor and probably California's next Governor, and Barbara Boxer, United States Senator, may seek such satisfaction.

General Brown is investigating the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN sting.

Sacramento Bee, "AG opens probe into ACORN video flap" (October 1, 2009):

"Attorney General Jerry Brown's office has opened an investigation into the controversy surrounding videos that purportedly show members of community organizing group ACORN giving advice on how to open a brothel.

"In a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dated Sept. 25, Chief Deputy Attorney General James M. Humes said the office has 'opened an investigation of both ACORN and the circumstances under which ACORN employees were videotaped.' The governor had asked Brown two weeks ago to look into the incidents.

"The probe was sparked by a series of hidden-camera videos in which a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute are advised on how to set up a prostitution business by people identified as workers for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now...."

Don't be surprised if General Brown opts not to decline to prosecute in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion and instead prosecutes James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the video stars, in the shoot-the-messenger and no-good-deed-goes-unpunished tradition, in order to placate the Far Left and to ascertain whether the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN sting was, in Senator Boxer's words, "well...coordinated."

California law protecting privacy is very broad. Surreptitious recording is a felony in California. The "Pimp and Pro" sting that publicly exposed ACORN included surreptitious recording on two days in three California cities at four locations on at least five occasions. So multiple counts can be asserted.

Senator Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, seemed very embarrassed by recently released e-mails from scientists at the University of East Anglia indicating that the case for global warming is based on manipulation instead of true science.

So Senator Boxer is focusing on...the release of those emails!

"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" Senator Boxer declared at a committee meeting.

But the angry Senator knows that "the cat is out of the bag."

Senator Boxer; "Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I'm looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public."

Senator Boxer should "look[] at these emails" with the objectivity that those politically motivated scientists eschewed.

But don't count on it.

Senator Boxer wants a criminal investigation of how those emails became public instead of a public expose of how science was perverted in the pursuit of a key part of the radical political agenda that would devastate America if adopted.

Apparently the emails were obtained through hacking.

Senator Boxer: "This is a crime."

What is what those scientists did?

Senator Boxer announced that her committee may hold hearings into the matter as its top Republican, Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), has asked for, but that a criminal probe would be part of any such hearings.

"We may well have a hearing on this, we may not. We may have a briefing for senators, we may not," Boxer said. "Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated.

As Artie Johnson used to say, "Verrrry interesting!"

Is there an unstated message in ACORN favorite Senator Boxer's publicly stated position?

Does Senator Boxer really want an investigation of the substance of those emails or no investigation at all?

Is the price of a "Climategate" Congressional investigation, figuratively speaking, the scalp (or scalps) of the whistleblower hacker(s) who revealed what Congress should have discovered long ago and still would not know but for the apparent hacking?

The failure of United States Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate ACORN and California Attorney General Jerry Brown's investigation of the duo who visited ACORN offices in three California cities--James O'Keefe, 25, a former UCLA law student, and Hannah Giles, 20, a college student--prompted sting strategist and BigGovernment.com publisher Andrew Breitbart to deliver this message to General Holder on "Hannity": "...this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time."

The BigGovernment article report the message was unsubtly titled "Breitbart to AG Holder: Investigate ACORN or We’ll Release More Tapes Just Before 2010 Election."

Breitbart insists that what he did was not blackmail because it was public.

Breitbart, "Thanks for Paying attention Big Journalism" (November 21, 2009)(http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/21/thanks-for-paying-attention/):

"And now to address the fever-swamp’s notion that what I said on 'Hannity' last night was 'blackmail.' Blackmail occurs when one party threatens to reveal an unsavory piece of information about another party, and demands money in exchange for silence. For obvious reasons, it is most often conducted in private. I, on the other hand, went on national television with a challenge to the Attorney General to do his job; unlike this administration and its justice department, what I did was fully open and transparent.

"There will be consequences if there isn’t an investigation into ACORN. The videos will be shown and at a particular moment. There is nothing illegal about my proposed response to the continued inaction from this justice department, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to have my day in court and let a jury hear why I have gone to such extraordinary measures to tell a major story that the dying, partisan, leftist media has worked so hard to suppress.

"The days of the Democrat-Media Complex controlling the narrative are in their end times. And if the AG wants to turn his focus on me instead of ACORN, then that day will be closer than many of them think.

Breitbart is right about his openness and transparency (or brazenness), the "partisan, leftist media," and blackmail being "most often conducted in private," but he is not a lawyer, blackmail can be conducted publicly (as he acknowledged) and in California the object of blackmail can be a public act as well as money. Unfair as it may seem to some, it's legal to publicize a Congressman's adultery, but it's illegal to threaten to do so unless he or she votes a certain way.

Will General Holder finally be persuaded to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate ACORN for criminality and corruption?

Will General Brown decide to investigate Breitbart for attempted blackmail (Breitbart was in California when he delivered the "message")?

Will General Brown prosecute O'Keefe and Ms. Giles, or decline to prosecute in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, or appoint a special prosecutor to handle the matter?

The answers to all those questions may depend upon whether sufficient public demand for a Congressional investigation of ACORN and/or the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate ACORN can be generated.

To date, the "Pimp and Pro" sting has not generated such demand, due to the determined apathy of the liberal media establishment and the disappointingly apolitical nature of the criminality exposed by the sting.

Such demand is generated by POLITICAL scandal, such as Watergate.

Memo to President Obama: After it became clear that Watergate involved political corruption and was not merely "a third-rate burglary," a President who had carried 49 states in 1972 resigned in 1974 to avoid being removed from office.

The whole truth about the Obama/ACORN relationship and the ACORN/Democrat Party relationship needed to be pursued last year, but was not. It still needs to be pursued, for the sake of America as a whole, and also if keeping O'Keefe, Ms. Giles and perhaps Breitbart out of jail is a goal.

Time will tell.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.