ACORN Los Angeles (Recorded on this date)

NJO: Here I've tried to make a timeline of the ACORN Los Angeles recordings. Note that although the links still work as of the last time I checked, the California Office of the Attorney General website no longer lists them anywhere I could find using a site search.

Video.
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/video/V0814001.wmv
Duration: 20 minutes 50 seconds. James and Hannah enter ACORN LA office. First meeting with Lavelle Stewart. Exit office and return to car. James goes back to Lavelle to deal with a phone problem. Exit office again. End of video.

Audio.
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/video/Levelled.wmv
9 minutes 30 seconds. James and Hannah enter ACORN LA office. First meeting with Lavelle Stewart. Audio ends as they are about to leave.

Audio.
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/video/LevellPartI.wmv
6 minutes 48 seconds. Exactly the same as "Levelled.wmv" but without the initial 2 minutes 42 seconds.

Audio.
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/video/acornla19.wmv
1 minute 23 seconds. James talks to Lavelle about the phone problem.

Audio.
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/video/acornla20.wmv
2 minutes 33 seconds. Lavelle deals with the phone problem.

Video.
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/video/V0814002.wmv
13 minutes 45 seconds. James and Hannah enter ACORN Housing LA office (a different location). Meeting with Felix Harris. Video ends before meeting concludes.*

Video.
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/video/V0814004.wmv
23 minutes 58 seconds. James and Hannah enter ACORN LA office again. Second, longer meeting with Lavelle Stewart. Exit office again. End of video.

Audio.
http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/video/LevellPartII.wmv
24 minutes. As "V081404.wmv" but audio only.

* The video "Felix Harris - LA ACORN Employee of the Year" contains a brief snippet of what appears to be the conclusion of this meeting. The original piece of video from which this snippet must have been culled would, logically, have been among the files that James was ordered to hand over to the California Attorney General's Office in exchange for limited immunity, but curiously a file containing this snippet is absent from the files listed above (which used to be listed and available on the website).

Thus, it looks as if James was neglectful in his duty to hand over all recordings pertaining to the case like he was ordered to do.

If I was to try to get inside James' head regarding what could have motivated him to defy a court order like this, I would hazard a guess that the piece of video in which Felix Harris seems to put an end to the conversation represented to James' mind a net "passing of the test" or "exoneration" for Felix Harris, thus running contrary to his and Hannah Giles' stated purpose in recording the videos. I would also speculate, given James' track record of 1) distrust for the government, 2) petty vindictive behavior, and 3) general "spoiled son of privilege" attitude, that he would not have been a happy bunny to have some shady bureaucrat of a State Attorney General orderin' him to, y'know, do some stuff that he din' wanna do, and hand over somethin' that he din' wanna hand over, and that this was all it took for him to go into Defiant Martyr Mode and wilfully neglect to include the offending piece of video.

I would guess that he thought by handing over a batch of videos that was slightly incomplete (i.e. by dishonestly pretending that his camera ran out of power or memory before the meeting with Harris concluded) he could at least restore a margin of ambiguity to the recording, plus be a general dick into the deal (again). You know, like what Jesus would want him to do.

Indeed, there would seem to be a precedent for that sort of behavior in how James dealt with the ACORN Philadelphia video. Unlike the recordings of the other six ACORN locations, no long cut of the ACORN Philadelphia recording has ever been publicly released. It can be speculated that it too had what James and company viewed as an undesirable outcome that didn't fit their purpose.

Update: This post gets the "James on ethnicity" tag on account of the short discussion about Mexicans that James and Hannah have at the start of the video.

Minions / fellow culture warriors involved:

Hannah Giles