David Daleiden orders Calif. attorney general to retract statement claiming he’s a 'felon'
David Daleiden has demanded that California Attorney General Rob Bonta retract a government press release that claims the pro-life activist is a convicted felon.
Daleiden and fellow pro-life activist Sandra Merritt recently reached a plea agreement with the state attorney general in which a host of charges against them over their undercover filming of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers were dropped.
On Tuesday, Bonta released a statement claiming that he had secured “the felony conviction of David Robert Daleiden, along with co-conspirator Sandra Merritt, for criminally recording confidential communications with women’s healthcare providers.”
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“Yesterday, they each pleaded no contest to, and were found guilty of, one felony count of California Penal Code Section 632(a) (unlawful recording of confidential communication),” stated the press release.
Daleiden denied the claim that he was a convicted felon, announcing on his X account Wednesday that he was issuing “a Demand for Retraction and Correction to the California AG's Office for the false statements in their press release yesterday and ‘unsigned’ press statements this morning, which directly contradict the Court's rulings on Monday.”
The pro-life activist also posted a screenshot from a transcript of the legal proceedings, in which the court is quoted as saying that “the plea at this point will be entered but it will not be accepted as a felony.”
“The judge explicitly stated on the record yesterday that we would ONLY be ‘convicted’ and ‘found guilty’ if we break the agreement,” Daleiden added.
In 2015, Daleiden’s group, the Center for Medical Progress released a series of undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the illegal sale of aborted babies' body parts.
Daleiden and Merritt also secretly recorded conversations that took place at conferences hosted by the National Abortion Federation in 2014 and 2015, with NAF suing them in response.
In one of the undercover videos filmed at a Planned Parenthood workshop in Michigan in 2014, an abortion provider argued against helping young victims of rape and sexual assault. She asserted that because clinic workers are not state employees, they should not be required to report suspected cases of child abuse to authorities.
Both organizations and many pro-choice activists have argued that the videos were deceptively edited. However, CMS also released hours of unedited video from each encounter with abortion providers and their speeches at conferences.
Multiple state-level investigations that followed failed to bring criminal charges against the abortion providers.
Daleiden and Merritt weathered years of legal battles over their undercover investigation, facing several charges, including illegal recordings of private events and falsification of IDs as part of their cover.
In October 2022, for example, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit released a unanimous decision against the pro-life activists that required them to pay a $2.4 million judgment to Planned Parenthood.
Circuit Judge Ronald M. Gould authored the panel opinion, rejecting the arguments of the pro-life activists that their actions were protected by the First Amendment and journalistic practices.
In 2020, Daleiden filed a complaint against then U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and others, alleging that Harris wrongfully investigated him while she was California attorney general.
“Daleiden became the first journalist ever to be criminally prosecuted under California’s recording law … because his investigation revealed and he published ‘shock[ing]’ content that California’s Attorney General and the private party coconspirators wanted to cover up,” stated the lawsuit.
“Defendants seek their ‘pound of flesh’ from Mr. Daleiden and to chill other journalists from investigating and reporting on that same content.”
