How an investigation into Planned Parenthood boomeranged against its accusers

David Daleiden, left, and his fake driver’s license under the name “Robert Daoud Sarkis.”

For Houston prosecutors, the crucial evidence that turned a criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood into a probe of the group’s critics was two forged California driver’s licenses with phony names.

The fake licenses were used by two antiabortion activists, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, to gain access to a Planned Parenthood conference in Houston last April in order to make an undercover video intended to show that the organization was engaged in the illegal sale of fetal tissue for abortions.

But apparently unknown to the activists, Planned Parenthood security guards had scanned the licenses that they presented as they entered the conference.

When Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood last summer — amid a political outcry spurred by the videos — one of the group’s lawyers, Josh Schaffer, met with the prosecutors and turned over copies of the fake IDs.

The phony licenses with fake names (“Robert Daoud Sarkis” for Daleiden and “Susan Sarah Tennenbaum” for Merritt) are dated in 2009 and 2010, respectively, according to copies obtained by Yahoo News on Tuesday. The documents then became the basis for criminal indictments against the two antiabortion activists that a grand jury returned late Monday. The charge against them: tampering with a governmental record, a felony that is punishable by between two and 20 years in prison, under Texas law.

“This is not your teenage kid presenting a fake ID to get a six-pack of beer,” Schaffer told Yahoo News in an interview. “What elevates this is the intention to defraud and harm another.”

Daleiden was also charged with a misdemeanor relating to the purchase and sale of human organs, according to a statement by the district attorney. No charges are to be filed against Planned Parenthood, the original target of the probe.

Schaffer described how from the outset of the probe, he and Planned Parenthood fully cooperated with investigators. “I met with the prosecutors,” he said. “We gave them a tour of the facility, and we turned over a slew of documents.”

Sandra Merritt’s fake driver’s license under the name “Susan Sarah Tennenbaum.”

But even after receiving the phony driver’s licenses, the prosecutors and agents on the case were stumped by one issue: They had the phony name that Merritt had used on the driver’s license — “Susan Tennenbaum” — but they didn’t know her true identity, Schaffer said. And when they questioned Daleiden, Schaffer said he learned from the prosecutors, the antiabortion activist refused to tell them.

Then, just this month, there was a breakthrough: Daleiden was being deposed in California for an unrelated civil suit brought by a fetal tissue provider. In the suit, he was asked about his colleague, and he was forced, under oath, to identify her as Merritt. Schaffer got a hold of a transcript of the deposition, and it allowed Planned Parenthood to file its own civil suit earlier this month against the two activists, the group they were working for — the Center for Medical Progress, an antiabortion organization in Irvine, Calif. — and four associates.

Among the allegations in the suit: that Daleiden, the Center for Medical Progress’s chief executive officer, and Merritt created a fake fetal tissue company with phony business cards to carry off their ruse. And that, as part of the plan, Merritt even created a fake Facebook page with “likes” that included Hillary Clinton and “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Daleiden and Merritt couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday. But in a statement on the Center for Medical Progress’s website, the group said, “The Center for Medical Progress uses the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades in exercising our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press, and follows all applicable laws. We respect the processes of the Harris County District Attorney, and note that buying fetal tissue requires a seller as well. Planned Parenthood still cannot deny the admissions from their leadership about fetal organ sales captured on video for all the world to see.”