California charges two anti-abortion activists with illegally filming Planned Parenthood employees.

David Deleiden

Courtesy of Time Magazine: 

California prosecutors on Tuesday charged two anti-abortion activists who made undercover videos of themselves trying to buy fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood with 15 felonies, saying they invaded the privacy of medical providers by filming without consent. 

The charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress come eight months after similar charges were dropped in Texas. 

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a longtime Congressional Democrat who took over the investigation in January, said in a statement that the state "will not tolerate the criminal recording of conversations."

Prosecutors say Daleiden, of Davis, California, and Merritt, of San Jose, filmed 14 people without permission between October 2013 and July 2015 in Los Angeles, San Francisco and El Dorado counties. One felony count was filed for each person. The 15th was for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy. 

Daleiden said in an email to The Associated Press that the "bogus" charges are coming from "Planned Parenthood's political cronies." 

"The public knows the real criminals are Planned Parenthood and their business partners," Daleiden said.

Actually what the majority of the public knows is that these people are political operatives who used doctored videos to damage and organization which provide a myriad of health care services to women all across the country.

If you have forgotten about these assholes, here is your reminder.

Essentially these folks tried to do the same thing to Planned Parenthood that James O'Keefe's carefully edited videos did to ACORN.

In the end however, besides smearing the reputation of Planned Parenthood, they were unsuccessful in destroying the organization. (Not that the conservatives are not still trying.)

Hopefully in a blue state like California these smear merchants will receive the justice they so richly deserve.