From The Washington Times

The community organizing group ACORN has fired two employees at its Baltimore office who were seen on hidden-camera video giving advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman pretending to be a prostitute, as some legal experts raise questions over whether the employees broke the law.

In the video made public Thursday, two visitors to an ACORN office in Baltimore told staffers they needed assistance securing housing where the woman, a 20-year-old who called herself “Kenya,” could continue to run her prostitution business.

An ACORN official told the couple how to falsify tax forms and seek illegal benefits for 13 “very young” girls from El Salvador that they said they wanted to import as prostitutes.

On Thursday night, the two employees were fired. But legal experts say their next stop could be a courtroom.

Though no tax forms were filed and the child prostitutes didn’t exist, at least one ACORN official engaged in “numerous acts of criminal facilitation,” said Judge Andrew Napolitano, FOX News senior judicial analyst.

• STORY: ACORN Officials Videotaped Telling ‘Pimp,’ ‘Prostitute’ How to Lie to IRS

“Criminal facilitation occurs whenever a person encourages, enables, entices, or explains to another how to commit crimes with the real purpose of helping that person to commit those crimes” — a violation the ACORN employee “committed in full,” he said.

Napolitano said the worker could also face charges for criminal conspiracy, though each charge would require a heavier burden to prove: a so-called “act of furtherance” — a concrete move that makes the conspiracy active.

Napolitano outlined eight crimes the ACORN worker could potentially have committed that could bring a total sentence of 24 years in prison, including criminal facilitation and conspiracy to:

• • (a) commit prostitution
• • (b) operate a prostitution ring
• • (c) file false documents with taxing and other government authorities
• • (d) file false documents with a bank [also known as bank fraud]
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• • (e) violate numerous immigration laws
• • (f) transport children into the U.S. for immoral purposes
• • (g) transport women into the U.S. for immoral purposes [also known as violating the Mann Act]
• • (h) impair the welfare of minors.

But not all legal experts agreed that ACORN had committed a crime. Trial attorney Lee Armstong said that the employee had engaged in “repulsive … disgusting behavior,” but nothing illegal occurred because the entire scenario was a sham.

“For aiding and abetting tax evasion, for aiding and abetting child prostitution … you need the actual crime,” said Armstrong, an attorney for Jones Day in New York. “That’s what’s missing here.”

Armstrong said that the videotape appeared to show the ACORN official hatching a conspiracy, but no violation occurred because the 25-year-old filmmaker was only “pretending” to be a 25-year-old pimp.

“You need an actual agreement between two people to commit a crime. If one person is just faking it, you don’t have a meeting of the minds, you don’t have a conspiracy,” Armstrong told FOX News. “How do you clap with one hand?”

ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — calls itself a network of families “working together for social justice and stronger communities,” according to its Web site.

But the organization has been accused by conservatives and Republicans of committing fraud in voter registration drives around the country, and reaction to the videotape came swiftly after its release on Thursday.

“Taxpayers should be outraged that their money has gone to an organization that, in addition to facing charges of voter fraud and tax violations, is willing to facilitate prostitution,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

“As this video confirms, ACORN continues to operate as a criminal enterprise.”

In a selection from the video, ACORN officials treated the “pimp’s” illegal schemes with nonchalance and offered to help further what they knew to be crimes.

“It’s illegal. So I am not hearing this, I am not hearing this,” said an ACORN staffer who identified herself as an accountant. “You talk too much. Don’t give up no information you’re not asked.”

Because the group receives millions of dollars in federal grants, Napolitano said, “ACORN agents and employees are required by law to adhere to high standards of lawful and ethical behavior; standards akin to those required by law of federal employees.”

ACORN suggested a plan of action for the purported pimp and prostitute, but did not fill out tax forms with any false information. But because the official sought a $50 fee for ACORN’s services, a conspiracy charge could still be considered, a defense attorney told FOX News.

“Conspiracy requires an agreement to do something unlawful and an act in furtherance,” said Mark Eiglarsh, a New York-based attorney. “There’s an agreement to assist in creating the brothel, in tax evasion, a number of other offenses.”

The act in furtherance, he suggested, could be the staffer’s seeking payment for the work. “I think that a prosecutor … would agree to go forward on a conspiracy count,” he said.

Whether or not prosecutors charge any ACORN officials in Baltimore, the filmmaker himself could be in hot water.

A Maryland state statute requires consent from all parties whenever a conversation is taped, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Violations of the law are punishable by a maximum of five years in jail and a fine up to $10,000.

But that statute does not apply to videotape recordings — only to phone calls or other electronic “communications,” Napolitano argued — meaning the filmmaker is likely in the clear.

From the Washington Times

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. has backed off his plan to investigate purported wrongdoing by the liberal activist group ACORN, saying ?powers that be? put the kibosh on the idea.

Mr. Conyers, Michigan Democrat, earlier bucked his party leaders by calling for hearings on accusations the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) has committed crimes ranging from voter fraud to a mob-style “protection” racket.

“The powers that be decided against it,” Mr. Conyers told The Washington Times as he left the House chambers Wednesday.

The chairman declined to elaborate, shrugging off questions about who told him how to run his committee and give the Democrat-allied group a pass.

Conyers spokesman Jonathan Godfrey said late Thursday, several hours after the first request for comment, that the chairman had been referring to himself as “the powers that be.”

Pittsburgh lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh, whose testimony about ACORN at a March 19 hearing on voting issues prompted Mr. Conyers to call for a probe, said she was perplexed by Mr. Conyers’ explanation for his change of heart.

“If the chair of the Judiciary Committee cannot hold a hearing if he wants to, [then] who are the powers that he is beholden to?” she said. “Is it the leadership, is it the White House, is it contributors? Who is ‘the power’?”

The comment spurred similar questions by House Republicans, who asked whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was involved in blocking the probe.

“Chairman Conyers has a responsibility to explain who is blocking this investigation, and why. Is it Speaker Pelosi? Others in the Democratic leadership? Who in Congress is covering up ACORN’s corruption?” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, ranking Republican on the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties, said the chairman should be calling the shots.

}Mr. Conyers, who heard the allegations against ACORN, was sufficiently impressed to realize a future hearing was needed to thoroughly investigate the matter,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that people who didn’t hear the testimony are making the decisions. The Democratic leadership should step up to disclose who instructed Mr. Conyers to drop his plan.”

The office of Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, did not respond to questions about Mr. Conyers’ comments.

Capitol Hill had bristled at the prospect of hearings because it threatened to rekindle criticism of the financial ties and close cooperation between President Obama’s campaign and ACORN and its sister organizations Citizens Services Inc. and Project Vote.

The groups came under fire during the campaign after probes into suspected voter fraud in a series of presidential battleground states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Mexico and Nevada.

ACORN and its affiliates are currently the target of at least 14 lawsuits related to voter fraud in the 2008 election and a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act complaint filed by former ACORN members.

The group’s leaders have consistently denied any wrongdoing and previously said they welcomed a congressional probe.

The group did not respond to questions about Mr. Conyers being convinced to drop those plans.

Ms. Heidelbaugh, who spearheaded an unsuccessful lawsuit last year to stop ACORN’s Pennsylvania voter-registration drive, testified in March that the nonprofit group was violating tax, campaign-finance and other laws by, among other things, sharing with the Barack Obama campaign a list of the Democrat’s maxed-out campaign donors so ACORN could use it to solicit them for a get-out-the-vote drive.

ACORN also provided liberal causes with protest-for-hire services and coerced donations from targets of demonstrations through a shakedown it called the “muscle for the money” program, said Ms. Heidelbaugh, a member of the executive board of the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Mr. Conyers, a fierce partisan known for his drive to continue investigating President George W. Bush’s administration, had been an unlikely champion for opponents of ACORN.

Before calling for the probe, he frequently defended ACORN. In October, he condemned an FBI voter-fraud investigation targeting the group, questioning whether it was politically motivated to hamper a voter-registration likely to turn out supporters for Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

But in March, Mr. Conyers dismissed the argument made by fellow Democrats that accusations of voter fraud and other crimes should be explored by prosecutors and decided in court, not by lawmakers in Congress.

“That’s our jurisdiction, the Department of Justice,” Mr. Conyers said in March. “That’s what we handle voter fraud. Unless that’s been taken out of my jurisdiction and I didn’t know it.”