Fox's Shannon Bream Helps CMP's David Daleiden Push Debunked Smears About Planned Parenthood

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

Fox's Shannon Bream interviewed Center for Medical Progress' David Daleiden and continued to spread debunked claims that Planned Parenthood is profiting from the selling of fetal tissue. Daleiden has been indicted by a grand jury for illegal actions he took and is facing numerous lawsuits over his attempts to smear Planned Parenthood with deceptively edited videos. Many media outlets have rejected his claims and confimed that CMP's videos are misleading, fraudulent, and above all, not journalism. In the interview, Bream also continued to allege that Planned Parenthood may have committed illegal activity, despite numerous state investigations clearing the organization of any wrongdoing. Most recently, CMP released a 14th deceptive video, featuring sections of footage from the first hearing of Congress' Select Panel on Infant Lives, demonstrating a dangerous feedback loop operating between CMP and anti-choice lawmakers on the select panel. From the April 17 edition of Fox News' America's Election HQ:

SHANNON BREAM (HOST): On Wednesday, the House Select Panel on Infant Lives will hold a hearing into whether abortion providers or those within the fetal tissue procurement industry are illegally profiting off the sale of fetal body parts and organs. That whole issue was brought to light last summer via undercover videos showing negotiations over the remains, captured as part of a years-long investigation by David Daleiden. He is now the one facing legal action, including criminal charges, in connection with what he uncovered. He joins us now live, exclusively, David, thanks for joining us today.

DAVID DALEIDEN: Great to be here, Shannon.

BREAM: All right. I want to start in California where you live and where not long ago there was a raid on your home, not on Planned Parenthood or others who were portrayed in the video. And they have maintained they have done nothing illegal. Tell us about the raid on your home. What happened?

DALEIDEN: Yeah, you know, what it is, Shannon, it's an outrageous show of an attempt to intimidate and bias on the part of the attorney general's office when the biggest violations in Planned Parenthood's baby parts program took place in California, the most damning video admissions that we have on tape of their top level leadership talking about using,changing their abortion methods to get more intact body parts, talking about the profit motive of the clinics in harvesting body parts. All of that is on tape in California. Yet the AG's office is refusing to investigate Planned Parenthood, and instead is coming after a citizen journalist like myself.

BREAM: And by the way, we did reach out, our producers, to Planned Parenthood to have them be a part of this segment or a response to some of what’s been is going on, and we have not to date heard back from them. But you mentioned the attorney general in California. She, Kamala Harris is running for Senate now. And some folks have pointed out the fact that on her campaign website, she has a petition for folks to sign to, quote, “protect Planned Parenthood,” quote, and the important work it does. This week there was a rally there in California calling for her resignation. Do you feel that she can be objective? Can you be objective about that assessment?

DALEIDEN: Yeah, well, I think at the end of the day, what all people would want to see objectively is everyone who is involved in this being treated by the same standard. And that's not what is happening. Like I said, the worst admissions about Planned Parenthood's baby parts harvesting program, the Planned Parenthood affiliates that have done the most work in that area over the past five years are all based out of California. Stem Express, which is one of the companies which has that’s been subpoenaed by the select House panel, was partnered with the biggest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country, which is up in northern California, for five years. And that relationship, though, is not being investigated by the attorney general's office, and yet they're coming after whistle-blowers and citizen journalists. So, if everybody were being held to the same standard, the situation would look different.

BREAM: Let me ask you, did they take materials from your residence that are critical to what you've been working on? My understanding has been that you have more videos and more material to release. Is that, has that been jeopardized?

DALEIDEN: Definitely. They seized multiple hard drives, multiple laptops, all kinds of paper files, pretty much the entire, the entire archive of project material that we had accumulated over the course of several years.

BREAM: Do you have any hopes, though, that maybe in seeing that raw material, maybe they will be persuaded that there is something on the other side of this that needs to be investigated that may be in violation of California law?

DALEIDEN: I mean, I hope so. I think that anyone who takes an objective look at the material, when you look at senior level Planned Parenthood officials saying that the clinics have a profit motive in harvesting the body parts, saying that the abortion clinics don't have to do any of the actual work of fetal tissue procurement, and yet they're still getting paid on a per specimen -- that's a per body part basis, all of that indicates very clearly that there is a profit motive and that there is illegal profiteering going on in the trade of aborted fetal tissue. So,I think an objective review would yield something like that.

BREAM: Well, and again, that's going to be the focus of the Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill, which we will cover. And just I quickly wanted to mention that you're facing criminal charges in Texas. I know your legal team has filed a motion to have those indictments quashed based on allegations of some type of improper behavior or coordination between the DA's office and Planned Parenthood. Again, we invited Planned Parenthood to be a part of this story. We haven't heard from them. But again, all the parties mentioned do maintain that they are innocent and have not committed any illegal activity.