The ACORN story is not difficult to understand. It is about a simple sting operation designed to reveal that a prominent organization routinely aids illegal activity. When James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles walked into ACORN offices posing as a pimp and prostitute seeking to set up a brothel stocked by underage girls from central America, ACORN employees were only too happy to help – and no doubt, they had been only too happy to help real pimps and prostitutes in the past.

Did those employees commit a crime in offering to help O’Keefe and Giles themselves? Of course not, because O’Keefe and Giles weren’t actually a pimp and prostitute. All conspiracy crimes (which this would have been) require that there be an underlying criminal act – if no such criminal act exists, then conspiracy cannot be prosecuted. This makes sense. If you and I have a conspiracy to go to Baskin-Robbins, it is not a criminal conspiracy because no criminal act was ever in the offing. If a guy solicits an undercover police officer posing as a 12-year-old girl online, that’s not a crime unless the state legislature has specifically carved out such a situation. Similarly, in this case, no criminal act was in the offing because O’Keefe and Giles were never going to set up a whorehouse.

Duh.






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