The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has filed a lawsuit against FIU student Hanna Giles, accomplice James O'Keffe, and Breitbart.com, the site that posted their undercover videos.
ACORN is seeking "a preliminary and permanent injunction against further distribution" of undercover videos as part of the suit filed in Baltimore, where one of the videos was filmed. They also claim undercover videos violate a Maryland law that requires two-party consent for all electronic surveillance.
The timing coincides with speculation about the duo's possible beneficiaries and connections. Village Voice, one of our sister papers, draws a link between O'Keffe and Peter Theil, a gay, conservatively inclined Internet billionaire. No concrete evidence has surfaced that they were directly paid by any nefarious right-wing conspiracy types, but we have learned that some background info that's been spread about Giles is false.
It's been widely reported she's a journalism student at Florida International Univeristy, but a source inside the school tells us she hasn't been admitted into the program and has taken only one introductory course that's open to all students. She had originally intended on pursuing public relations. But Giles did spend her summer as a paid intern at the National Journalism Center, a right-wing journalism training program that spit out Ann Coulter back in the day.
