Last week, Bertha Lewis, the chief-organizer at ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, cited Linda Tripp when she spoke about ACORN’s lawsuit against James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles and Breitbart.com at Washington’s National Press Club. ACORN’s lawsuit accuses O’Keefe and Giles, whose pimp and prostitute undercover operation captured ACORN workers on video counseling them on how to cheat tax laws among other potential crimes, of violating Maryland law that requires two-party consent for electronic surveillance. Breitbart.com, the news website, is also named as a defendant for first posting the video.

“It is illegal, as Linda Tripp will tell you, to record someone in the state of Maryland without their permission. Just because we were embarrassed by these highly edited tapes, which don’t tell the whole story… doesn’t mean that these people didn’t break the law in order to embarrass and attack the organization,” Lewis said.

Lewis in not telling the “whole story” about the Maryland law, and using Linda Tripp as a favorable example might not have been a great idea considering the charges against Tripp were dropped.

As Tripp could tell ACORN, the Maryland statute is not cut and dry. Accusing O’Keefe and Giles of “breaking the laws to embarrass and attack the organization” may backfire on Lewis.
See statute.

But first I should declare my involvement. In late 1999 I was approached by Tripp’s representatives to write her story. I spent considerable time with her during the Clinton’s last year in office precisely when she fought those Maryland charges that were unexpectedly dropped after a two-year slog of a battle. It was around the time when, President Obama’s Secretary of State, then first Lady Hillary Clinton’s run for the New York Senate kicked into high gear.

Let’s briefly rewind to July 30, 1999 when Maryland prosecutors indicted Tripp on two counts of wiretapping that each carried a five-year prison term and $10,000 in fines.

Linda Tripp was a civil servant who served in the Clinton White House. After being called to testify in virtually all the Clinton investigations like other White House staffers, she was moved to the Pentagon in 1994. Later, it was there where she met former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Tripp eventually recorded her conversations with Lewinsky documenting Lewinsky’s sexual liaisons with President Bill Clinton.

Most notably downplayed from the media coverage at the time was that Tripp tape-recorded her conversations with Lewinsky for “insurance” in the event she was called to testify in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against President Clinton. Lewinsky did not want Tripp to reveal all she knew. Her request meant Tripp would have to lie under oath which is a crime — in all States. In fact, as documented in the Starr Report, getting Tripp back on “the team,” was vitally important not only to Lewinsky, but to President Clinton that he used his valuable time to meet with her in the White House to discuss getting Tripp back on the team. For those whose memory might be hazy, Lewinsky was told to contact President Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie, using the words “mission accomplished” when Tripp was back on team Clinton.

Surely for Lewis to use Tripp as an example, she must know that prosecuting someone under this so-called Tripp wiretapping/interception Maryland statute is extremely rare, as even many diehard Clinton supporters acknowledged at the time.

Consider this scenario. Imagine you are a parent living in Maryland and your child has been kidnapped. The kidnappers call, threatening to kill your child if their ransom demands are not met. Operating under Lewis’ and ACORN’s ostensibly myopic interpretation of the Maryland statute, that parent would be prosecuted if they recorded the kidnappers’ without notifying them of the recording, even if that recording was used by law enforcement to catch the kidnapper.

There were times when Linda sometimes wondered out loud with me whether some people would have preferred she lied under oath. As the nation split down partisan lines during the Clinton White House years, and she was relentlessly smeared, the short answer appears to be yes. I guess a similar sentiment could be attributed to ACORN and their supporters whose ties to politicians all the way up to President Barack Obama are well established. With criminal investigations into ACORN popping up, naturally, in the interest of self preservation, Lewis would prefer that resourceful journalists protected under Shield laws would not do their jobs or notice what’s been apparently happening at ACORN, just like some people evidently preferred not notice the dubious activities inside the Clinton Administration. Incidentally, some of these same folks have a powerful role today in the Obama administration.

Decades ago Ayn Rand wrote in her novel Atlas Shrugged, “The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws… Now that’s the system… that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

Meanwhile as ACORN attempts to turn O’Keefe, Giles and Breitbart.com into felons using Maryland’s murky law, Obama’s attorney general, a former Clintonista, Eric Holder, has thus far declined to investigate ACORN—despite calls from lawmakers and vote fraud investigations in some 15 states. History appears to be repeating itself.

Watch the first video:

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