Xavier Becerra tried to lock me up me for the crime of journalism — even the left called it ‘disturbing’

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California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra says his campaign is a “break the glass” moment for the state.

I should know.

During his time as California Attorney General, Becerra tried to put me in jail for exercising my basic First Amendment rights.

Specifically, he charged me with the “crime” of undercover video reporting on the harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts.

In other words: He tried to make journalism illegal.

Becerra’s predecessor in that office, Kamala Harris, launched the unprecedented case under California’s law restricting video recording of “confidential” conversations. It was the first and only time that law has been used against newsgathering.

On her watch, in 2016, the state launched an armed raid on my home to seize my undercover footage.

But it was Becerra who, in one of his first acts in office, made the decision to file 15 felony charges against me under the video recording law.

Almost a decade before the California establishment launched the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” to stop citizen journalists from investigating fraud, Becerra was a key architect in early efforts to shield politically-favored, government-funded wrongdoers from scrutiny.

Even left-leaning outlets called Becerra’s filing of charges “a disturbing overreach” to protect a politically-favored interest group, namely Planned Parenthood.

As the case dragged on, half the charges against me were thrown out. Two Southern California companies exposed by my undercover reporting admitted illegally selling body parts in a nearly $8 million settlement with local law enforcement.

But Becerra persisted, even arguing that exceptions in California’s video recording law for gathering evidence of crimes did not apply because legal abortion, in his view, meant that partial-birth abortions and even infanticide of an infant born alive during an abortion were not crimes against a “person.”

It was not until the Congressional release of some of the Harris-seized tapes, and the reelection of President Donald Trump, that Becerra’s successor, Rob Bonta, finally negotiated the dismissal of the case.

Becerra carried his selective regard for the law into his tenure as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the Biden administration. Under oath before Congress, he repeatedly denied the very existence of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act — while eliminating important ethics safeguards for fetal experimentation.

Candidate Becerra now also boasts about his role injecting “700 million COVID shots into the arms of Americans”. We now know that Becerra’s HHS enabled Dr. Fauci’s cover-up of the potential miscarriage risk to pregnant women from COVID shots in the first trimester.

Two years ago, my investigative reporting nonprofit exposed gruesome public records documents from the University of California’s fetal organ harvesting program with Planned Parenthood in San Diego, dating from the time that Becerra was prosecuting me for reporting.

Among the documents were the “consent forms” that Planned Parenthood had used to sign late-term abortion patients up for the UC organ harvesting program — both the English-language version, and the Spanish-language translation.

The English-language forms disclosed to pregnant women that there might be “commercial value” in Planned Parenthood and the University’s harvesting of their baby body parts. But the Spanish-language forms removed the disclosure about “commercial value” entirely.

Xavier Becerra doesn’t want journalists to report on what he actually does. When he sat down with a journalist in May, he tried to tell her what she was allowed to ask him. “This is a profile piece, this is not a gotcha piece,” he instructed.

Take it from me: Becerra won’t stop there in his attempt to control the narrative. People talk about threats to the media. He’s the real deal.

He’s right about one thing: This really is a “break the glass” moment. The First Amendment is at stake in this election.

David Daleiden is the founder and president of The Center for Medical Progress.

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