The final bogus criminal charge against David Daleiden has been dismissed and his case completely expunged. It’s the final step in a victory for the pro-life advocate who exposed Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry for selling the body parts of aborted babies.
The dismissal ends a nearly decade-long Democrat-led prosecution launched to silence his undercover videos that exposed Planned Parenthood’s grisly aborted baby parts trade.
Daleiden, founder and president of the Center for Medical Progress, announced the victory Thursday on X.
“As promised, the final charge has been DISMISSED and the case completely expunged—after a couple months’ administrative delay, and a truly bizarre last-minute ‘April Fool’s’ attempt by @PPFA and @NatAbortionFed to overturn the State’s agreement,” he wrote.
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The dismissal fulfills the terms of a January 2025 settlement in which California dropped all charges against Daleiden and undercover reporter Sandra Merritt. The agreement required no jail time, no fines, no admission of wrongdoing and no probation.
In exchange, the pair entered a “no contest” plea to a single misdemeanor video-recording charge, which was to be entered as a judgment in six to 12 months, then converted to a “not guilty” plea, dismissed and expunged.
Seven of the original 14 charges had previously been dismissed for lack of probable cause.
The prosecution began under then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris after Daleiden’s 2015 videos were released. In the January 2025 statement marking the initial settlement, Daleiden described the case as political lawfare.
“After enduring 9 years of weaponized political prosecution, putting an end to the lawfare launched by Kamala Harris is a huge victory for my investigative reporting and for the public’s right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby body parts. Now we all must get to work to protect families and infants from the criminal abortion-industrial complex,” he said.
Defense attorney Steve Cooley, former Los Angeles County District Attorney, sharply criticized the long-running effort.
“In my 5 decades as an attorney, 40 years of which were as a prosecutor, I have never seen such a blatant exercise of selective investigation and vindictive prosecution. The California Attorneys General who initiated this case and pursued it for nearly 10 years should be ashamed for weaponizing their office to pursue people who were merely exposing illegality associated with the harvesting and sale of fetal body parts,” Cooley said.
Daleiden’s videos led to a $7.8 million settlement in which two companies admitted illegally selling aborted baby parts obtained from Planned Parenthood abortion centers in Southern California.
The reporting also contributed to Planned Parenthood’s disqualification from state and federal funding in Texas and helped spark a pending nearly $2 billion federal False Claims Act case against the organization.
The resulting exposure accurately painted Planned parenthood as a money-hungry abortion business whose top executive were caught repeatedly on undercover videos talking about buying Lamborghinis and altering abortion procedures to get aborted baby parts to sell to research firms and universities ranging from the University of Pittsburgh to Colorado State University.
The aborted baby parts practice was exposed across the country in states ranging from California to Texas to Colorado. Planned Parenthood officials eventually admitted in depositions that what Daleiden and his team exposed was true.
The complete expungement now allows Daleiden to focus fully on continued investigative work exposing injustices within the abortion industry.
