Final charge against David Daleiden dismissed after 10 years of fighting

The final charge against David Daleiden, a pro-life undercover journalist who exposed fetal trafficking in the abortion industry, has finally been dismissed after nearly a decade of court battles.

David Daleiden

@daviddaleiden

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🚨⚖️✌🏾VICTORY!!! California DROPS Prosecution Launched by @KamalaHarris to Cover Up #PPSellsBabyParts Undercover Videos

12:44 AM · Jan 28, 2025

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Key Takeaways:

• In 2015, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt released undercover footage showing Planned Parenthood executives and officials expressing their willingness to sell the body parts of aborted children, even haggling over prices.

• Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris met with Planned Parenthood officials and then ordered criminal investigations into Daleiden and Merritt, setting off a decade-long court battle.

• California agreed in 2025 to a plea deal with Daleiden that includes no prison time, fines, no admission of wrongdoing, and no probation.

• The final charge has now been dismissed, and the case expunged.

The Backstory:

In 2015, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt released undercover footage of Planned Parenthood and other abortion industry officials expressing their willingness to sell the body parts of preborn babies they aborted. The videos showed the executives haggling with organ procurement companies over the prices of organs and other body parts obtained from aborted children.

In 2016, after Daleiden and Merritt began releasing the footage from their undercover investigation, then-California AG Kamala Harris almost immediately began colluding with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry to suppress information about the alleged, illegal sales of human body parts and attacking Daleiden and Merritt instead.

As Live Action News previously explained:

Harris gave unreleased footage from CMP directly to the National Abortion Federation (NAF) after raiding Daleiden’s home.

Daleiden, along with CMP investigator Sandra Merritt, had been charged with violating a state eavesdropping law, just after Planned Parenthood and NAF worked together to file a lawsuit preventing the release of new undercover videos. They filed the lawsuit before Judge William Orrick, who has ties to Planned Parenthood. In addition, Orrick and his wife have continued to donate to Planned Parenthood, openly showing support for the abortion chain on social media, while demonizing CMP as “domestic terrorists.”

After Orrick issued an injunction against the release of any new videos, Harris met with Planned Parenthood executives. Daleiden has alleged that Planned Parenthood General Counsel Beth Parker told Harris she wanted access to his computers. E-mail exchanges also show Harris and Planned Parenthood working together to get a search warrant to obtain CMP’s full, unedited videos. She further worked with Planned Parenthood to craft a bill which would make recording undercover conversations with “health care providers” a crime, with the parties passing copies of the bill back and forth before submitting it.

Two weeks later, Harris ordered a raid on Daleiden’s apartment, demanding agents seize evidence from CMP’s investigation, including laptops and hard drives containing undercover footage. Meanwhile, Harris refused to investigate the allegations of Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses’ trafficking of aborted baby body parts, which CMP set out to expose.

From there, Harris gave [National Abortion Federation] lawyers access to the unreleased videos; billing records obtained by Fox News show attorney Alexandra Laks requesting payment for “coordinate review of new videos” the day after the raid took place.

Fifteen charges were initially filed against Daleiden and Merritt, and after 14 of them were thrown out, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra (an ardent defender of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry) simply refiled more charges.

The crux of the legal case revolved the undercover investigation utilized by Merritt and Daleiden, though it is a tool commonly used by journalists, and one California did not oppose until it was directed at the abortion industry. The charges against Daleiden and Merritt were so egregious that the U.S. Reporters Committee filed a friend of the court brief opposing them.

This set off a court battle that has taken 10 years to resolve.

The Details:

In January of 2025, Daleiden and Merritt announced a deal with the state of California, in which the AG's office agreed to drop all remaining charges. In exchange, Daleiden and Merritt agreed to plead guilty to one felony charge, which would be reduced to a misdemeanor charge after a one-year probationary period, and then dismissed and expunged altogether.

Daleiden released a statement on X confirming that this final charge has indeed been dismissed, as promised:

After enduring [nine] years of weaponized political prosecution, putting an end to the lawfare launched by Kamala Harris is a huge victory for my investigative reporting and for the public's right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood's sale of aborted baby body parts. Now we all must get to work to protect families and infants from the criminal abortion-industrial complex.

Today, the State of California agreed to totally dismiss the unprecedented video recording case Kamala Harris brought against me [nine] years ago, in exchange for me entering a plea of "no contest" on a single charge. The agreement involves no admission of wrongdoing, no fines, and no probation. The new "no contest" plea — which cannot be used adversely — will be entered into judgment as a misdemeanor in [six] to 12 months, and then converted to a "not guilty" plea and dismissed.

Live Action founder and president Lila Rose celebrated the dismissal with a statement on X.

Lila Rose

@LilaGraceRose

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After a decade of California bureaucrats attempting to prosecute, bankrupt and imprison @daviddaleiden for his courageous and groundbreaking pro-life reporting, they have officially FAILED. David beat Goliath, and he’s only getting started.

David Daleiden

@daviddaleiden

🚨⚖️As promised, the final charge has been DISMISSED and the case completely expunged— —after a couple months' administrative delay, and a truly bizarre last-minute "April Fool's" attempt by @PPFA and @NatAbortionFed to overturn the State's agreement. 😅 More on that later...

2:57 AM · Apr 2, 2026

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"After a decade of California bureaucrats attempting to prosecute, bankrupt and imprison David Daleiden for his courageous and groundbreaking pro-life reporting, they have officially FAILED," she wrote. "David beat Goliath, and he’s only getting started."

The Bottom Line:

This is a victory not only for the pro-life movement, but for free speech and journalism as well.