While I applauded his initial sting, it now seems he and a couple cohorts walked into Sen. Landrieu's (D-LA) offices dressed as telecom techs and claiming her phones were on the blink and needed servicing. He'd heard, as many of us had, that the senator was difficult to reach by phone after getting some $300 million for her state in exchange for voting in favor of the health bill. A lot of people wanted the inside skinny on that. Can't say I blamed them.
O'Keefe claims he was simply trying to determine if the office staff was intentionally ignoring incoming calls, or if something was actually wrong and they really could not receive calls at all. Why he thought it was necessary to dress up with telephone tools and garb to make this determination is something I don't get.
It was all rather a simple question to answer: All he had to do was dial the office's main number on his cell phone as he stood just outside the office doors--or even as he walked through them (he could make like he'd gone into a wrong office--anything to go inside for a few seconds as the call was placed). If the phones clearly rang on the desk and were ignored, he'd have his answer; if the call didn't ring into the office, he would know it wasn't a staff plot. If he needed videotape of them not answering ringing phones, then he'd have to come back with undercover cameras again.
But instead, he got arrested for entering a government office under false pretenses. He could have walked in during his cell phone call and simply held up a finger to the receptionist as if to say, "Just one second, I'll state my business as soon as I'm done here", and then turned around and walked out. No arrest; no news; no trouble.
But no. He had to be stupid. Some investigations are easily done; some are stupidly done. This was the latter.
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