Hannah Giles admits O'Keefe didn't wear pimp costume to ACORN (Correction)

Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent got an amazing scoop from CPAC.

Conservative activist Hannah Giles flat-out admitted to Dave that collaborator James O'Keefe never wore his pimp costume during their attempted hidden camera stings of the anti-poverty group ACORN:

I asked Giles about a criticism that’s often been leveled against them — that they hyped up the video by wearing outrageous clothes in promotional materials and the videos’ introductions that they didn’t wear in the actual stings.

“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles. “That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”

I guess the New York Times is going to have to issue that clarification after all.

Correction: I took Giles to mean that the costumed footage of her as a prostitute and him as a pimp was staged outside the ACORN offices. After reviewing the videos, I'm convinced that she wore that costume into an ACORN office at least once.

Recall that O'Keefe didn't even pose as a pimp during the ACORN stings. He work khakis and claimed to be the college student boyfriend of a prostitute, Giles, who was trying to get away from her abusive pimp. Naturally, that didn't stop O'Keefe from going on TV in his pimp costume and inviting the inference that he wore the suit during the sting. 

At least Giles posed as a prostitute at the ACORN offices. That much was never in doubt. The question is whether she wore that prostitute costume. The videos show her in various sexy outfits in ACORN offices. She isn't always as flamboyantly dressed as she is in the famous promo shot with her and O'Keefe in full pimpin' regalia, but she appears to have worn that memorable leather halter top and sarong ensemble into the Baltimore office ACORN office. She looks more ordinary in some of the other stings, like the San Diego operation, where she's dressed in a pink tank top and clunky jewelery--though, since the video is shot from the waist up, for all we know, she's not wearing any pants.

Andrew Breitbart has been forced to admit that O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp to sting ACORN.

Comments

[Paul L.]

Where in her quote/response does she say she never wore the "hooker costume" into ACORN. She only commented on the pimp costume.
Even the "independent" Harshburger Acorn whitewash report does not make that claim only the O'Keefe was not dressed as a 70s pimp.
Maybe you should watch the Acorn videos. Hanna Giles can be seen in them.
And it shoots out the water the narrative promoted by progressives when the Acorn videos first came out that the Acorn employees were just humoring them because their disguises were humorous Halloween-like costumes.

Or is this going to be like when Lindsay would not let go of/back down from the wiretapping/teabugger charge against O'Keefe.

[aeroman]

I got a mailer from Hannah Giles (via some organization) purporting to be collecting money for her legal defense. It was pink and spelled "prostitution" incorrectly. It may be online already, but, if not, want a scan?

[John Emerson]

Giles seemed completely to be unaware that news footage (to say nothing of criminal evidence) isn't supposed to have "b-roll". For her there's no info but infotainment, I guess. It's weird that conservatives dare to whine the way they do about pomo and relativism when they fund operatives of this sort.

In my opinion you should just delete your winger scum stalkers. There's a DSM-IV category that gravitates toward lady bloggers.

[Norman Costa]

"“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles."

No, but Giles and O'Keefe wanted it to look that way. Lying, deceitful, manipulative bastards. Honest political action?

[Brad Friedman]

CORRECTION for Lindsay

Giles admitted that O'Keefe never wore his "pimp" costume, NOT that she did not wear her prostitute outfit.

O'Keefe represented himself to the low-level ACORN workers as her legal student boyfriend trying to help her *escape* from an abusive pimp.

But you are correct that the NYTimes now has no excuse for not issuing corrections to their repeated misreporting on this story now that Giles has admitted that both Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe lied about the ACORN "pimp" story.

Full details here for ya:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7708

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Read carefully. Giles said that the footage with her and O'Keefe dressed as a prostitute and a pimp, respectively, was just b-roll footage:

“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles. “That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”

I read her as saying that the footage where she was dressed as a prostitute and O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp was all shot outside the ACORN offices.

[cfrost]

What I find rather more disgusting even than the cheesy “journalistic” subterfuge is the assumption on the part of everyone involved with this little piece of dreck, from Mr. O'Keefe and Ms. Giles to the 100% white audience it was intended for, that black people are all characters out of '70s era blaxploitation movies. Doubtless Mr. O'Keefe would have included the themes from Shaft or Superfly had he known who Isaak Hayes or Curtis Mayfield were but he's probably limited to patrio-kitsch C&W.

We knew that Obama's election would bring the racists crawling out of their tea bag pupae. What's shocking is that they're getting thick as mosquitoes in muskeg.

[Brad Friedman]

You can see her in the vids dressed as a prostitute (though a pretty conservative looking one), and they tell the ACORN workers as much.

What they DIDN'T tell ACORN workers, was that O'Keefe was a pimp, despite the b-roll footage trying to suggest they did, and despite Breitbart's claim in his WashTimes column that he dressed as a pimp, and despite O'Keefe's appearances in the media (such as Fox) where they said he was "dressed exactly as he was in ACORN offices up and down the Eastern Seaboard".

I've been on a tear at BRAD BLOG, starting back here:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7689
...to get the NYTimes to retract their incorrect reporting on this. That's what Media Matters was picking up on, and what Giles was asked about Weigel the other day when she had to make her admission.

Which, in turn, forced Breitbart to make his today, briefly and dripping w/ sarcasm, at CPAC.

NYTimes still refuses to correct, even now. Will have more on this on Monday, but feel free to let [email protected] know how outrageous it is that they refuse to correct! Even after reporting: "They visited Acorn offices in Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn and San Bernardino, Calif., ... Mr. O'Keefe, 25, a filmmaker and conservative activist, was dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risque high school play."

and much more, as detailed here: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7705

[pete]

with all the lying and missdirection these two have shown themselves to be what they are, media whores, pimping themselves for a movement that will use them up and toss them out like a used condom

[parse]

Giles seemed completely to be unaware that news footage (to say nothing of criminal evidence) isn't supposed to have "b-roll".

I'm not sure who would have standing to determine whether news footage is "supposed" to have b-roll, but I think network and cable news programs use it routinely. The b-roll of O'Keefe in a ridiculous costume seems intended to creat a false impression and deserves criticism on those grounds, but I don't think it's correct to say that use of b-roll, per se, violates commonly recognized journalistic ethics.