WASHINGTON — Conservative activists backed away Wednesday from a young video producer who was arrested with three others accused of posing as telephone repairmen in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.
James O’Keefe had gained renown and backing in conservative circles last year for producing an undercover videotape of ACORN workers offering advice to him and a friend posing as a pimp and prostitute.
He and three other men were arrested Monday at the federal building housing Landrieu’s office in New Orleans and accused of attempting to tamper with the senator’s telephone system.
Kathy English, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said Wednesday that a preliminary hearing on the charges against the four would be held in New Orleans on Feb. 12.
“If they were doing that, it’s Watergate,” Fox News host Glenn Beck said on his radio program Wednesday. “That’s insanely stupid, and illegal — if it’s true.”
Even O’Keefe’s partner in the ACORN videos, Hannah Giles, dissociated herself.
“I am shocked by the reports of this behavior,” Giles said. “I am well aware that following the law is an integral part of being a good investigative journalist.”
Andrew Breitbart, a publisher of conservative websites who had promoted O’Keefe’s anti- ACORN work, said in an interview with a conservative radio host that he pays O’Keefe “a fair salary,” but not for what is alleged in New Orleans.
O’Keefe, Breitbart said, “was not involved in anything that was related to Big Government, or ” in the senator’s office. But Breitbart on his website accused “the mainstream media” of jumping to conclusions about what O’Keefe was up to.
Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado is also backing off on his support for O’Keefe. He sent reporters a statement Wednesday saying the alleged break-in was “unacceptable and wrong.”
Lamborn was one of 31 House Republicans who co-sponsored a resolution last fall praising O’Keefe for his ACORN expose.
