San Diego ACORN Employee Fired after Clumsy Press Conference Backfires

Via Breitbart The San Diego division head of ACORN, David Lagstein issued a statement Thursday night to report the firing of Juan Carlos Vera. Vera was the ACORN employee seen in the fifth undercover video of Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe giving advice to the two on smuggling underage El Salvadorans across the border for prostitution.

Lagstein had shown support for his employee earlier saying he believed Vera had done his best to handle a difficult situation. After a mere three hours and a review of the video tapes, Lagstein announced the decision to fire Vera.

Vera reportedly broke down in tears during a news conference intended to explain Vera's side of the events shown on the video. The conference was admittedly timed to coincide with an Obama speech on health care reform.

Fox 5 San Diego confirms that Vera had tears streaming down his face as he challenged reporters to see the entire video. Vera argued that because of a language barrier Giles and O'Keefe were able to easily confuse him. Using broken english he related the pair coming to his office to inquire about housing. Vera claimed O'Keefe told him the woman was a prostitute trying to get away from her pimp.

Attempting to explain the discussion on smuggling young women into the country, Vera claims to have offered to call his cousin who is a National City Police officer but said the couple refused his offer. Fox 5 reports Vera again challenged those at the conference to watch the video:

"I say okay, I can help you. We can, I don't know call the police. And when they start the video I say that," Vera said. "Put the video completely and I say that."

Vera then attempted to explain what was obviously an attempt at solicitation of Giles "services:"

"The lady say you wanna know how much I charge, you wanna know? Yeah, how much do you charge? And the guy say, you want something from my girlfriend? And I say no, no. I'm just curious, that's it," Vera said. "And they don't put that in the video, they don't put that. These people left and when they left, I have a cousin that's police and I call."

Clearly none of Vera's claims were backed up on the review of the video. It is hard to imagine Lagstein and other ACORN officials had not reviewed the tape and compared Vera's explanations prior to scheduling the press conference they hoped no one would cover while Obama gave yet another health care speech. It seems highly coincidental that the House voted to defund ACORN by a wide margin during the same time Lagstein was reportedly reviewing the tape.

Let's be very clear shall we? ACORN reps and Vera thought they could pull a fast one calling a well-timed press conference hoping Vera's "Rosa Lopez" style testimony would be enough to deflect attention from the latest evidence of ACORN corruption. It didn't work. The House vote took place likely without any knowledge of the soap opera press conference, nor would it have mattered had they known. All this is proof positive that not only is ACORN corrupt, they are lousy at damage control.
H/T: Big Government Headlines