Fox News broke the story early Thursday and
ACORN (Association for community organizations for reform now) immediately went in damage control mode.
A man in his 20's, posing as a pimp and a 19 year old college girl posing as a prostitute walked into the Baltimore
ACORN office seeking advice on how to set up a brothel. They got what they wanted. It was a wild scheme that producers of the undercover video said revealed the weaknesses of
ACORN. “You're a performing artist so stop saying prostitute," said one acorn employee on the recording. The tape shows
ACORN employees telling a supposed pimp and prostitute how they can cheat on their taxes, set up a brothel and claim underage El Salvadoran sex workers as dependents. “Train them to keep their mouths shut," said another worker.
Sonja Merchant-Jones, Chair of Baltimore City
ACORN said, “We do great work in this city and that served as a distraction.” It’s a distraction that has put them on the defensive. “We don't know exactly what was said how it was said whether it was dubbed whether it was cut, sliced we don't know," she explained.
The two employees have since been fired. Merchant-Jones said they were seasonal, part time workers who were not authorized to act on
ACORN's behalf. She said protocol was not followed because there were no senior staff members or officials in the building at the time. “There was nothing done where acorn took any type of monies from them there was nothing done that we found that was illegal," she continued. The “actors” in the video are conservative bloggers Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe who posted the YouTube video on the website
BigGovernment.Com. That's why Merchant-Jones is questioning the motive and timing of the tape's release. “The President gave a speech on health reform,” she said, “that tape was done some time in July and just released today.”
We've learned the pair tried to pull off the same undercover act at
ACORN offices in LA, New York and Philadelphia but were turned away. Merchant-Jones admits it looks bad for Baltimore, so employees will work harder to enforce their own policies. As for the taping, it is illegal in Maryland to record someone's voice without his or her permission so acorn may be pursing legal action.
