Conceiving Crime: An undercover investigator became the subject of investigation

In the season finale of the Conceiving Crime podcast, host Sami Parker takes a look at a multi-faceted case that took a full decade to play out.

David Daleiden’s story first made the news back in 2015 when, after he released undercover video footage exposing harsh and brutal findings against Planned Parenthood, he found himself (and his fellow investigator, Sandra Merritt) to be the focus of a targeted investigation meant to destroy the reputations of those who exposed the information.

In early April 2016, Daleiden was at home making lunch when he heard a knock on his door. Outside his window, he saw a large, white, windowless van and a dozen California Department of Justice agents surrounding his apartment. Several of them were at his door.

“Some of them had, like, K-9 dogs with them. Some of them had assault rifles. All 11 of them didn’t even fit in the apartment. It was that small. So, like, five of them went inside and were just, like, trashing the place, overturning boxes, like pulling things out of drawers, rifling through everything, the entire premises — and then the other six of them were positioned around the perimeter outside with their dogs and their rifles,” Daleiden told Live Action founder and president Lila Rose in a recent interview. 

He Went Undercover And Exposed Planned Parenthood w/David Daleiden | The Lila Rose Podcast E175

The agents were there to seize the video footage Daleiden had recorded in public places of Planned Parenthood executives and other abortion industry workers. The footage purported to show inhumane, illegal, disturbing crimes carried out by these top players in the abortion marketplace.

But that’s not why the agents wanted the video.

Sent by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris, the agents were there to take all of the footage and other supposed evidence in order to investigate Daleiden himself, and the manner in which he obtained the footage.

For 10 years, legal drama played out in courtrooms from California to Texas as the public tried to decipher who was in the wrong: Planned Parenthood or Daleiden. Was what he had uncovered true and so damning that even the California AG was trying to silence him? Or was Daleiden’s work simply a manufactured hit piece from a pro-life activist to try to shut down America’s biggest abortion business?

A decade later, the cases are now closed, but questions remain. Listen to “Hearts, Livers, Lungs” on the Conceiving Crime podcast.