This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," May 18, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Joining us now are two women in the middle of the [NYT-ACORN] story, Heather Heidelbaugh, an attorney who sued ACORN. She's in Pittsburgh. And from Washington, Anita MonCrief, whose name is all over the place here, a former ACORN employee who became a whistleblower and talked to Stephanie Strom the reporter.
So Ms. MonCrief, The Times guy Hoyt says the paper didn't have enough to run the Obama-ACORN connection. They didn't have enough evidence. What say you?
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ANITA MONCRIEF, PROVIDED NYT DOCUMENTS WITH OBAMA-ACORN RELATIONSHIP: I think that he is wrong. The New York Times had the Obama donor list. This was not the donor list that was given to the FEC. This was the list that included the smaller donors, the $50 donors, the $25 donors. The list that the FEC never saw. It would have been really easy to cross-check and check with these people and see if they had given to the campaign. This was the complete second quarter Obama donor list.
O'REILLY: All right, and the donor list would have indicated a lot of ACORN people on it, giving money to the campaign. But look, even if they didn't cross-check, even if they didn't do it, you supplied The New York Times, Ms. MonCrief, with an awful lot of evidence that never made it into print, did you not?
MONCRIEF: That's correct. I went through and gave Stephanie Strom background on Project Vote and ACORN. She knew how they were operating as an unofficial arm of the party. She had the Kerry list, the Clinton list. She had all of this information. And I had been working with Marcel Reid of the ACORN 8, and I saw the 14-page report that she wrote about through Elizabeth Kinsley, and…
O'REILLY: All right. So you gave her all this info and it never came up. It never got in the paper.
MONCRIEF: Correct.
O'REILLY: And I want to point out once again, Ms. MonCrief, that you are an Obama supporter.
MONCRIEF: Yes, I am.
O'REILLY: I mean, you're not a Republican. You're not somebody who's out to get the guy. You were just horrified by the corruption that was taking place in the election? Am I overstating it?
MONCRIEF: Correct. No, that is correct.
O'REILLY: OK, now, Ms. Heidelbaugh, you then get involved. You see the corruption also. And now you read Hoyt's article. Now remember, Hoyt is the ombudsman. He's supposed to be the independent honest guy keeping track of The New York Times. When you read that article yesterday, Ms. Heidelbaugh, what did you think?
HEATHER HEIDELBAUGH, ATTORNEY, SUED ACORN: Well, when I first saw what the mass media did in failure to report what Ms. MonCrief testified to under oath, I as an American was shocked. Because I had a naive belief that the media, the national media in our country would fairly report stories. So when I saw his article come out yesterday, I've already been sort of — the bloom is off the rose. I wasn't shocked.
O'REILLY: OK, but how dumb is this guy? I mean he says that I tried to mislead "Factor" viewers by leaving out the fact that The New York Times did report an article about the partisanship of ACORN, when I said right on camera that they did an article about the partisanship of ACORN. I mean, is the guy — how do you process stuff like that? You're an attorney.
HEIDELBAUGH: That's right. And when I read his article, I was sort of reminded of a Clintonesque moment. What is the definition of is? Because what he's trying to do is he's trying to parse the language. And what we really need to know is would the electorate have cared if they had known that President — candidate Obama and the ACORN organization were tied in much more than what the candidate admitted to? Would that have mattered to the electorate? And what Clark Hoyt said yesterday was, as a matter of opinion, because his column was on the opinion page, that the American electorate didn't care and therefore was not a game changer. Well, I would pose it to your viewers.
O'REILLY: Well, yeah.
HEIDELBAUGH: Would the electorate liked to have known?
O'REILLY: It's not Hoyt's job to dictate what the American people care about and what they don't care about. But I don't want to be unfair to Obama. I don't know how much Obama knew about his campaign people and ACORN. The man was busy. He was out all over the place. And it's certainly, Ms. MonCrief, I'm going to give you the last word. It's certainly possible Barack Obama had no idea what was going on in the field. But I still think that The New York Times totally booted the story and was very disrespectful to you, Ms. MonCrief. You gave them a great story and they basically spiked it.
MONCRIEF: It's unbelievable to me, and I still am trying to process it. But I hope that in the coming weeks, we'll be able to get the information out there. I'm working with Marcel Reid to get the 14-page report posted, so people can see that it was a whitewash. She didn't write about the partisanship issue. She just covered it over.
O'REILLY: All right. Well, Ms. MonCrief, we will continue on the story. Ms. Heidelbaugh, thanks for helping us out.
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