Memo to Sean Hannity, who is calling for James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart to get a “journalism award” for their video sting of ACORN: Generally, when in possession of what one believes to be newsworthy information, the journalistic thing to do is get it out to the public—not attempt to blackmail the attorney general.
In an exchange that begins around the 4:30 mark, Breitbart says:
Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.
Italics are original to the transcript at Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, where the post featuring this clip bears the headline, “Breitbart to AG Holder: Investigate ACORN or We’ll Release More Tapes Just Before 2010 Election.”
Greg Marx is an associate editor at CJR. Follow him on Twitter @gregamarx.