Typically, when you illegally record someone, that makes you a perpetrator. Not in the world of the left, where illegally recording Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from a hallway outside his office wins you plaudits and status as a victim. Curtis Morrison, the spokesperson for super PAC Progress Kentucky who recorded McConnell’s office, has started a legal defense fund for himself that has raised a miniscule $2,590. Now he’s taking to the pages of Salon.com to whine about it.
“The released portion of the recording clocks in at less than 12 minutes, but those few minutes changed my life,” Morrison dramatically writes. “I leaked the recording to Mother Jones, which published it with a transcript and analysis in April, and over the days that followed, blogs and cable news shows lit up with the revelations from that one meeting.” In actuality, nothing from the meeting was particularly stunning – it was all basic campaign opposition research. What was more stunning was a political opponent illegally recording a sitting Senator.
But Morrison sees himself as a hero. “In a technology age marked by vigilante heroes like Julian Assange and Anonymous, the line between journalism and espionage has grown thin. McConnell was quick to frame himself as the victim of a crime, which was to be expected. It was the guilty repositioning of a politician who has been caught being craven. What I never expected was the pushback from my own political side.”
Poor Morrison says he lost everything, including his apartment, his job, and his career path. But, he continues, “I will not paint myself as a victim.” Except that he does, and then describes in painful detail how he illegally recorded McConnell:
I was sweating. My heart was racing. I tried to record backup audio on my phone, but my cheap replacement phone would only let me record voice memos of one minute in length. Every time the minute was up, the phone would beep, which was excruciating for the person crouching by a door vent. When a gentleman walked out of the campaign headquarters and into the hall, I put my Flip and phone back in my pocket, and headed to the elevator …. I knew the recording had given me an opportunity, and I wanted to seize it. Though my initial instinct was to release the tape that day, I wondered if it wouldn’t have more impact closer to the election.
He explains, finally, how everyone should emulate his illegal activity: “I could still be prosecuted. And wouldn’t that be smart? Here we are — the sequester in full tilt, special-education teachers and air traffic controllers are being laid off, funding for medical research is being cut – and let’s funnel those savings into taking down that destitute guy with the Flip camera. But I still think it was all worth it … If given another chance to record him, I’d do it again.”
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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