David Daleiden’s Charges Fully Expunged After He Exposed Planned Parenthood’s Sale of Aborted Fetal Body Parts

The final charges have been dropped against David Daleiden almost a decade after he exposed Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry’s operation selling aborted fetal body parts.

Daleiden, founder and president of the Center for Medical Progress, was the center of a Democrat-led lawfare campaign led by then–California Attorney General Kamala Harris after he exposed in 2015 via undercover footage abortion facilities selling aborted babies’ body parts.

“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,” Daleiden wrote Thursday on X.

Charges were brought against Daleiden and undercover reporter Sandra Merritt in 2017 after they exposed the sales.

In January 2025, the State of California agreed to a settlement deal with Daleiden and Merritt.

All charges have now been dropped against Daleiden and Merritt, in exchange for a “no contest” plea for one felony video-recording charge. That charge was eventually converted to a misdemeanor, and the no-contest plea entered as a not guilty plea, and then dismissed and expunged.

The January 2025 deal requires no jail time, fines, admission of wrongdoing, or probation for the pair, who originally had faced the possibility of ten years in prison.

“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,” Daleiden said in 2025 at the time of the settlement. “Now we all must get to work to protect families and infants from the criminal abortion-industrial complex.”

Daleiden and Merritt’s reporting exposed two abortion companies that admitted to obtaining aborted fetal body parts from Planned Parenthood centers in Southern California and selling them illegally. In a settlement with the Orange County district attorney’s office, the two companies forfeited $7.8 million in profits from the sales.

The revelations also contributed to Planned Parenthood’s disqualification from receiving state and federal funding in Texas.

“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,” Steve Cooley, former Los Angeles County district attorney, said of the case. “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.”