David Daleiden, an anti-abortion activist, is suing Sen. Kamala Harris after alleging she conspired to violate his civil rights while attorney general of California.
Daleiden claims in the federal lawsuit, brought by both him and his Center for Medical Progress on Wednesday, that he was unjustly prosecuted by Harris for her own political gain, according to Courthouse News Service. The charges stem from secret recordings he made while posing as someone attempting to obtain fetal tissue. In the tapes, he spoke to abortion providers and later posted the videos to YouTube in 2015.
The lawsuit claims the charges are political in nature and also names California’s current attorney general, Xavier Becerra.
“This complaint seeks justice for a brazen, unprecedented, and ongoing conspiracy to selectively use California’s video recording laws as a political weapon to silence disfavored speech,” Daleiden said in the complaint.
He and his associate Sandra Merritt were arraigned in February on nine counts related to invading the privacy of those they recorded. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Christopher Hite dismissed some of the charges because those recorded “didn’t have an objectively responsible expectation that their conversations would not be overheard,” although he allowed other charges stemming from a meeting with Planned Parenthood doctors at a restaurant in Pasadena that was “basically empty” because there was “sufficient evidence of a more private setting.”
He and Merritt had previously attempted to get the case thrown out as unconstitutional, claiming that because they were “undercover journalists,” their First Amendment rights protected them from the state’s law that bans recording confidential conversations.
“David Daleiden became the first journalist ever to be criminally prosecuted under California’s recording law, not because of the method of video recording he utilized in his investigation — which is common in investigative journalism in this state — but because his investigation revealed and he published ‘shock[ing]’ content that California’s Attorney General and the private party co-conspirators wanted to cover up,” the lawsuit reads, according to Fox News.
The lawsuit is pursuing a court order stopping California from prosecuting eavesdropping laws against him and also seeks monetary damages.
