In March 2016, top Planned Parenthood officials in California eagerly emailed one another about an upcoming meeting with the state’s then-attorney general, Kamala Harris. The meeting carried so much import that the Planned Parenthood officials met with Harris’ staff ahead of time “to discuss prep,” emails reviewed by The Daily Signal show.
About two weeks later, on April 5, 2016, California Department of Justice authorities raided the home of a pro-life journalist in his late 20s—David Daleiden, the head of the Center for Medical Progress, who had recently published videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood officials gruesomely describing how they extract aborted-baby body parts. Daleiden says the videos prove that Planned Parenthood was selling the aborted baby body parts for profit.
How had Daleiden done this? By studying up on fetal tissue and stem cells, posing as a fetal tissue procurer, infiltrating secretive abortion conferences so protected that they required background checks, schmoozing and sweet talking abortionists, nurses, and researchers over lunch, drinks, and dinner, and wearing hidden cameras to capture what no other journalists had.
It was an “elaborate sting,” Politico reported at the time, disparaging Daleiden’s findings with the remark: “which he considers a form of investigative journalism.”
He did and does believe his work constitutes pro-life, undercover journalism. Daleiden considers abortions and the sale of aborted-baby tissue the most grotesque human rights violation of his age and was willing to devote all of his time and resources to proving that Planned Parenthood must be stopped.
Planned Parenthood has vehemently said Daleiden’s videos were deceptively edited and insisted that it was only reimbursed for costs, but after heavy backlash, they announced in 2015 they will no longer be reimbursed for costs. They also sued Daleiden. He has been involved in a relentless, nine-year-long legal battle, instigated by the California Attorney General’s Office, then under Harris and carried on by Xavier Becerra, both of whom are now serving in President Joe Biden’s administration.
Planned Parenthood and the Biden-Harris administration did not respond to requests for comment for this article. As a response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Biden-Harris Justice Department has charged dozens of individuals with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, including some pro-life grandmothers and a number of fathers of large families. Many of these individuals will spend time in jail or prison.
“There’s no coincidence whatsoever that we see this escalation in the weaponization of the powers of the federal government on behalf of the criminal abortion industry and against peaceful pro-life demonstrators as soon as Kamala Harris gets into the White House,” Daleiden told The Daily Signal.
“This is a pattern for her,” he added. “Her weaponization of the powers of her office, on behalf of her powerful special interest sponsors in the abortion industry, to cover up their wrongdoing and persecute the people who want to expose it, that began in California with my case and I think it’s a pattern that she’s continuing to this day.”
The Raid
Daleiden had been traveling all week and decided to take that fateful day off, he said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. At around 8 a.m. on April 5, 2016, he says, he heard a knock on his door, but he was exhausted and went back to sleep, thinking it was a delivery person. He rose around 11 a.m., started cooking himself a meal, took the garbage out and tossed it into the dumpster before noticing a large white van parked outside.
The door of the van swung open, Daleiden said, and suddenly he found himself face to face with a group of state Justice Department officials and a search warrant for his home.
“There were 11 California DOJ agents who filed out of this big, white, windowless van,” Daleiden recounted. “It was like a dystopian clown car, because they just kept pouring out of the van, one after the other, these tall guys dressed in full California Department of Justice uniform.”
“They had K-9 dog units with them,” he added. “They had these big, black assault rifles that they were carrying. Only about five of them would fit in my one bedroom apartment at a time. The other six of them had to stand outside on the lawn with their dogs and assault rifles.”
Daleiden said that as they searched his home, rummaged though his belongings, the authorities found printouts and information about the different biotech companies he was investigating and accusing of buying aborted-baby body parts from Planned Parenthood.
But the state DOJ officials reportedly had no interest in his findings (the California DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal).
“They set those aside,” he said. “They weren’t interested … . What they wanted was the undercover video recording equipment and the digital media and the hard drives … . That was very telling about how state law enforcement had been weaponized under California Attorney General Kamala Harris at the time.”
Daleiden provided The Daily Signal with video footage of the raid that he took on his computer (footage he captured by quickly turning on the application “Photo Booth” when the state officials entered the house, he said.
The footage shows authorities, wearing uniforms that say “California DOJ Police,” searching Daleiden’s apartment as he calls his lawyer.
“The California DOJ just served a search warrant on my apartment. There’s five guys here in the apartment right now,” a slightly rattled Daleiden can be heard saying from the kitchen, before he moves back to the family room and examines the search warrant.
Out the window, at least three more officers are visible.
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Planned Parenthood’s Meeting With AG Harris
According to the emails, the March 23, 2016, meeting between Planned Parenthood, Harris, and her advisers was attended by a number of pro-abortion individuals.
The guest list included Kathy Kneer, who has served as CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California for the past 32 years; Sue Dunlap, then the president of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles; Celinda Vazquez, then the vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles; Ana Sandoval, then a senior adviser at Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California; and Sheri Bonner, who headed Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley for 20 years and now serves as a member of the Human Services Commission of Pasadena.
It’s not immediately clear what was said in the meeting.
But both Daleiden and his attorney, Steve Cooley, who served as the Los Angeles County district attorney from 2000 to 2012 and as Daleiden’s legal counsel following the raid, believe it ended in a plan of action; namely, getting Daleiden’s videos and hushing him up.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Kamala Harris, as attorney general, personally ordered the raid on David Daleiden’s home,” Cooley told The Daily Signal. “This was an effort to seize the video tapes that Mr. Daleiden had made during the course of his investigation. That was the primary purpose of that raid, to basically suppress his activities with respect to exposing the illegal sale of fetal body parts.”
The emails also show that Jill Habig, then special counsel to Harris, helped coordinate the meeting between Planned Parenthood and the California attorney general. Dozens of other emails viewed by The Daily Signal indicate that Habig was heavily involved in communications between Planned Parenthood and the California attorney general’s office.
Cooley described her to The Daily Signal as Harris’ special “liaison to Planned Parenthood” who helped maintain relations between the abortion giant and the California attorney general’s office.
Habig, who would go on to work for Harris’ U.S. Senate campaign and the Biden-Harris transition team and is now the founder of the Public Rights Project, did not respond to requests for comment.
According to legal filings submitted by Daleiden’s defense team in March 2017, Habig was internally pushing “criminal enforcement” against Daleiden through email exchanges with Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California’s Beth Parker, and attempted to link Daleiden to “anti-abortion extremist actions.”
According to an Investigation Report from the California DOJ, dated December 3, 2015, Parker told California DOJ agents that “Planned Parenthood would like the computers used to produce the videos seized.” That investigation report describes at length how Parker provided the agents with information furthering Planned Parenthood’s interests against Daleiden.
The California DOJ officers did indeed seize the computers used to produce the videos as well as the videos themselves, Daleiden’s team said.
Daleiden’s legal filings also state that as the National Abortion Federation began work on its federal lawsuit against him, it also was helping efforts to push Harris to prosecute him.
“Newly released NAF attorney billing records show that on July 24, in the course of preparing the injunction lawsuit, NAF was helping draft a ‘law professor letter to Attorney General’ Harris urging prosecution of Mr. Daleiden,” the motion says.
Daleiden’s team argued in that motion: “By bringing this selective, invidious prosecution, the Attorney General followed the fraudulent plan proposed by the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood to stop Mr. Daleiden’s public speech and obstruct other ongoing official investigations into the criminal trafficking of aborted fetuses. This prosecution was brought based on the invidious purpose to chill Mr. Daleiden’s exercise of First Amendment rights.”
Daleiden’s Undercover Videos
Daleiden’s findings not only rocked Planned Parenthood’s massive ecosystem, they shocked the country.
“Daleiden’s videos landed like a bomb in Washington this summer, providing fodder for a crowded field of Republican presidential contenders and energizing social conservatives on Capitol Hill,” The Washington Post reported at the time. “They also shed harsh new light on the venerable women’s health organization, capturing officials sipping wine while joking about abortion and appearing to haggle over the price of fetal tissue.”
In July 2015, Kneer had emailed Harris about a “heavily edited video of Dr. Deborah Nucatola” claiming that she wanted Harris to hear “directly from us that the claims being made are clearly outrageous and untrue.” She was referring to a gruesome video depicting Planned Parenthood officials allegedly discussing the sale of aborted-baby body parts—which Planned Parenthood has denied doing.
Posing as a fetal-tissue procurer, Daleiden had secretly recorded Nucatola, then senior director of medical services for Planned Parenthood, candidly discussing how to preserve aborted-baby body parts during the abortions of living babies in between bites of salad and sips of red wine. The video was published in July 2015.
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,” she explains.
“And with the [the head], in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex,” she continues. “So, if you do it starting from the breech presentation, there’s dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last step, you can evacuate an intact calvarium at the end.”
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He also secretly recorded Planned Parenthood official Mary Gatter allegedly discussing how abortionists could use a “less crunchy” technique to abort babies when the mother has said that she wants to donate fetal tissue. The video shows Gatter haggling over the prices of fetal tissue, discussing suction and vacuum techniques, and more.
“Let me figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ball park, then its fine, if it’s still low, then we can bump it up,” she says later as they discuss compensation prices. “I want a Lamborghini.”
“What?” asks a shocked sounding Daleiden.
“I want a Lamborghini,” she laughs.
“Don’t we all?” Daleiden replied.
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Planned Parenthood and Harris
Planned Parenthood aggressively denied the allegation that they sold aborted-baby body parts, saying they were only reimbursed for costs, but it is clear from their emails that they recognized just how bad the optics of the videos were.
In 2015, another Planned Parenthood official pinged Harris’ office (specifically, Jill Habig and Robert Sumner) about a “second video” that was released on July 21, 2015.
“We believe we are fully compliant with all federal and state laws and are investigating the situation,” Beth Parker, chief legal counsel for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, told Harris’ team. “Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns.”
Daleiden’s team argued in their motion for discovery and to recuse that Planned Parenthood’s influence on Harris and Becerra should prevent the California Attorney General’s Office from pursuing the case fairly.
They pointed out that Planned Parenthood donated at least $81,000 to Harris during her tenure as attorney general and in support of her Senate campaign, and that Becerra was also endorsed and financially supported by Planned Parenthood.
Becerra, who became the California attorney general in 2017 and served in the role until 2021, called the investigations into Planned Parenthood a “witch hunt” in 2016.
Daleiden has serious concerns about what a Harris presidency would mean for the United States.
“Anyone who weaponizes the powers of a governmental office in the U.S. in order to suppress the free speech rights of other American citizens, I think anyone who does that is unfit for public office,” he told The Daily Signal. “I think that makes Kamala Harris unfit for public office. And I think a Kamala Harris presidency would be incredibly dangerous for civil rights.”
