ACORN Exposer Arrested In Louisiana

James O'Keefe (of the ACORN video fame (or infamy depending on your leanings) was arrested in Louisiana with three other men. They’re accused of misrepresenting themselves as telephone repairmen to gain access to Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office and engaging in wiretapping at the Senator's office.

Activist James O'Keefe, 25, was already in Landrieu's New Orleans office Monday when Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel, both 24, showed up claiming to be telephone repairmen, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office said Tuesday. Letten says O'Keefe recorded the two with his cell phone.

In the reception area, Flanagan, the son of acting U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan in Shreveport, and Basel asked for access to the main phone at the reception desk.

After handling the phone, Letten's office said, they asked for access to a phone closet so they could work on the main phone system. The men were directed to another office in the building, where they are accused of again misrepresenting themselves as telephone repairmen.

They were arrested later by the U.S. Marshal's Service. Details of the arrest were not available. A fourth man, Stan Dai, 24, was also arrested, but Letten's office said only that he assisted the others in planning, coordinating and preparing the operation.

Federal officials did not say why the men wanted to interfere with Landrieu's phones or whether they were successful. Landrieu, a moderate Democrat, declined comment Tuesday. She has been in the news recently because she negotiated an increase in Medicaid funds for her state before announcing her support for Senate health care legislation.

Dumb doesn't begin to cover this. There is no excuse for his allegedly illicit behavior. O'Keefe and his comrades deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law no matter how much of a service O'Keefe provided in revealing the lack of character and judgment in ACORN employees at offices around the country who had no problem giving O'Keefe and his associate Hannah Giles all manner of advice on engaging in illicit activities.

Andrew Breitbart and Big Government claim no knowledge of the alleged wiretapping and that they would not have gone along with any such scheme. If I were them, I'd be damned sure that they didn't, or else Breitbart will find himself in serious hot water as well. I don't think Breitbart would be that stupid, but then again I wouldn't think that O'Keefe would attempt to engage in the wiretapping at the offices of a US Senator even as he was being sued by ACORN and by an ACORN employee for videotaping them at one ACORN's offices. The fallout from this arrest has the potential to seriously affect those cases and puts O'Keefe's career in a real bind.

UPDATE:
Here's the PDF of the FBI affidavit, and O'Keefe has apparently admitted to his role in this.

10 years.

That's what he and his fellow conspirators are looking at. And the feds would have every right to throw the book at him.