ACORN Crackdown: Twists, Turns and New Videotape

Meredith Jessup | September 16, 2009 4:30 PM

Each day brings some surprising revelations in the ACORN undercover investigation. Yesterday, we watched as ACORN worker Tresa Kaelke talk about her past work as a brothel manager as she advised "Eden" and James on how they should handle their own budding prostitution operation. Kaelke also talked about an alleged abusive relationship she had with a husband in the past that resulted with her shooting him dead.

ACORN has come out and said Kaelke was just acting, playing along with the two undercover investigators and fabricating the story of her husband's death. When pressed last night on Fox News' "Hannity" on evidence from the killing, both Hannah Giles who plays prostitute "Eden" and BigGovernment.com's Andrew Breitbart insisted they were "working on" getting the evidence.

Meanwhile, more video has been released from the San Bernadino investigation in which Giles holds a private conversation with Kaelke:

In other new video, a man and woman with unknown affiliations with Kaelke enter the picture for a discussion about what locations would be best to run their underage prostitution ring:

Part I

Part II

In addition, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs finally commented on the week-old investigation saying, "Obviously the conduct you see on those tapes is completely unacceptable."

"The administration takes accountability extremely seriously."
Gibbs said the Census Bureau decided that ACORN could not assist the group in meeting "the bureau's goal of achieving a fair and accurate count in 2010" and that some other agencies are evaluating their relationship with the group. "We constantly evaluate to ensure that any grantee is living up to what has to happen in order to fulfill that grant application."
He pointed out that "previous administrations" had awarded grants to ACORN either through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

While it's important the possible lies and/or trickery of Kaelke be worked out, it is still important to maintain attention on the larger picture--the extensive corruption of ACORN. ACORN leadership today announced the launch of their own "internal investigation." We've sure come a long way from claiming these videos are all "edited" and "doctored"! Not quite sure what their planned investigation means exactly, but stay tuned...

As always, I'll keep an eye out and continue to keep you posted with new developments as they become available.