The top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is demanding that Republicans on that panel insist that the person who filmed undercover videos of Planned Parenthood also testify next week, along with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.
David Daleiden is the anti-abortion investigator who has produced nearly a dozen undercover videos in which he secretly taped top Planned Parenthood officials talking about how some clinics provide aborted fetal tissue for medical research.
As of now, Richards is the only witness scheduled to appear before the panel next week, when she’s likely to get beat up by Republicans who oppose Planned Parenthood for providing abortions, and are trying to show the group broke the law. But the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, says Republicans need to subpoena Daleiden and force him to appear next week.
“Republicans have been letting Mr. Daleiden off the hook even though his group’s potentially illegal actions form the very foundation of the congressional investigation itself,” Cummings wrote to Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, on Friday.
Chaffetz has already subpoenaed Daleiden for footage he’d been prohibited by a court from publicly releasing. But Chaffetz has not said that he invited Daleiden to testify about the videos alongside Richards.
That’s raising the ire of Cummings and other Democrats, who want their own chance to publicly beat up on Daleiden, as Republicans will almost certainly excoriate Richards during the hearing. They’re trying to put the focus on Daleiden and raise questions of whether he broke privacy laws in order to obtain the undercover footage.
Republicans are holding the hearing as part of their probes into Planned Parenthood and whether the group illegally profited from the sale of fetal tissue or performed partial-birth abortions to obtain it. The Daleiden videos have sparked fresh controversy over Planned Parenthood and prompted conservatives to insist on stripping its federal funds, although they’re highly unlikely to succeed.
